A fearful thought occurred to Marianne. Perhaps Prince Corrado meant to subject her to the fate which, according to Eleonora Crawfurd, was common to all Princesses of Sant'Anna? A violent death that would revenge him for what he might, not unreasonably, consider a fool's bargain. Was he summoning her to execution – in the tradition of his family?

Putting her thoughts into words, she said tonelessly: 'I don't want to go back there… because I am afraid of them all.'

'No one is asking you to. Not at present, at least. I have already written to say that your health is still delicate after your recent accident and that you have retired, at the Emperor's command, to Bourbon, where the waters are beneficial not merely for rheumatic complaints, but also for female disorders. We can only hope, now that you have seen fit to come back, that no one will be sent to make sure that is where you are. But that is beside the point. I merely wished to make it plain to you that you have no money to throw about rashly and that while you are very far from beggary, you must begin to be a little careful and not spend what you have thoughtlessly. That being done, my dear, I will say good-bye to you.'

'Good-bye?' Marianne cried in alarm. 'You are not – not leaving me?'

It could not be true? Her dear old Arcadius could not be so angry with her as to leave her? Surely he could not blame her so much? Her face went so white that Jolival, seeing the tears that gathered in her big green eyes, could not help smiling. Bending, he took her hand gently in his and dropped an affectionate kiss upon it:

'Where is your common sense, Marianne? I am leaving you – but for a few days only, and on your own business. It has occurred to me that, if he will put himself to so much trouble, Citizen Fouché might do a good deal towards clearing the minds of his former colleagues at the Quai Malaquais, always supposing that the Emperor is willing to let him. I dare not trust a letter to the post, so I am going myself.'

'Going where?'

'To Aix-en-Provence where our friend the Duke of Otranto is wearing out his exile. And I am not without hopes, because quite apart from any kindness he has for you he will be delighted to put a rub in Savary's way. So be a good girl and wait for me nicely – and above all, don't do anything foolish!'

'Foolish? Here? I don't see anything I could do.'

'That depends,' Arcadius said and grinned. 'You might try forcing your way in to see the Emperor, for example.'

Marianne shook her head, saying seriously, as she slipped her arm through his to go with him to the door: 'No, that is one piece of folly I can promise you I will not commit – or not just at present. And in return for that, you must promise me to be quick—very quick! I will be very brave, and very patient, because I know you will bring back the evidence we need. I will be good and wait.'

But waiting was harder than even Marianne had foreseen. Almost before Jolival had left Paris, while the sky was still alight with the many-coloured showers of sparks from innumerable firework displays, the old, stealthy fears returned, insidiously, to take possession of her mind, as if only her friend's presence had the power to exorcize the demons and dispel the evil miasma. It grew worse as time went on.

Shut up in the Crawfurds' house with no other distractions than the detailed inspection of her host's collection of paintings, which was certainly very fine, and walks in the garden where she paced up and down wretchedly for hours on end like a prisoner, Marianne found her hopes melting away, little by little, dissolving like smoke in the chill wind of bad news.

First, she learned that the Emperor had refused to see the Vice-Grand Elector, as indeed it had been feared, and that there was nothing to be done but await the outcome of the very diplomatic letter which had followed the rejection of this request. Next, it became known that Jason Beaufort's trial would open on the first of October before the Assize Court in Paris, and the fact that a date should already have been fixed looked ominous indeed.

'Apparently,' the Prince of Benevento observed, 'the judges are anxious to get the matter out of the way before the new Penal Code which was passed on the twelfth of February this year comes into force next January.'

'What you mean is that the trial will be hurried through and Jason is condemned already?'

Talleyrand shrugged. 'Perhaps not… but, as the English would say, their lordships are certainly a great deal more at home with the old Code. It is always troublesome accustoming oneself to new procedures.'

In these circumstances, it was understandable that Marianne should have begun to sink under the burden of her own gloomy thoughts, especially when the only relief from these thoughts was the conversation of two elderly persons living exclusively in the past. For them, in fact, as Jolival had foreseen, she had become the ideal listener, since her own life was as fraught with drama as theirs had been.

However, if she felt little interest in the doings of Marie-Antoinette, except in so far as they were concerned with that terrible period in which her own father and mother had met their deaths for the queen, Marianne was very willing to listen to Eleonora's tales, which dealt exclusively with Lucca and the strange family into which her own fate had introduced her.

Oddly for a woman whose Italian blood had gifted her with a highly talkative nature, Eleonora maintained a total silence on the subject of her own private life, and especially about the one man who, more than any other, had been the great love of her life, that Count Fersen in whom so many women besides the queen had seen the living image of their dreams. The only sign of emotion which Mrs Crawfurd permitted herself was a small frown and a slight tightening of the muscles round her mouth when her husband, in the course of one of his interminable monologues, evoked the elegant figure of the Swedish count who had died so tragically two months earlier. But on the subject of the Sant'Annas, Eleonora waxed tirelessly eloquent, and so vivid were her powers of description that Marianne, sitting curled up for hours at a time in a deep armchair beside the tapestry frame over which the older woman's hands had fallen still, seemed to see the people of whom she talked conjured up, one by one, by her voice in the shadowy room.

In this way, Marianne learned that Eleonora had been born actually on the Sant'Anna estates. Her father had been the prince's head groom and her mother the princess's personal maid, an office she shared with the mother of Donna Lavinia, the present housekeeper, who was some years older than herself and with whom Marianne was already well acquainted. It was not difficult for her now to recall the sweet, lovely face, with the grey hair and the deep sadness of expression which seemed to carry in it all the latent melancholy of the domain. It did not seem that Lavinia had altered over the years: she had always been quiet, reserved and inclined to melancholy.

Eleonora and Lavinia had, naturally, been childhood friends. It was otherwise with the man whom Marianne had known as the agent, Matteo Damiani, the unnerving worshipper of statues who had tried to kill her once, one dreadful night when she had discovered his secret. Eleonora had been ten when Matteo was born but, maturing young like all southern girls, she had known immediately that the perilous Sant'Anna blood ran in the veins of the new-born baby brought to the villa one winter's night in the folds of her mother's cloak.

'He was the son of your husband's grandfather, Prince Sebastiano, and a poor girl from Bagni di Lucca called Fiorella who no sooner brought the child into the world than she drowned herself in the Serchio. Fiorella was pretty but slightly simple, yet she had seemed happy enough and no one could think what had made her do it – unless it was not entirely her own doing…'

'You mean – someone pushed her?'

Mrs Crawfurd made a vague gesture. 'Who can say? Don Sebastiano was a terrible man – and I imagine you must have heard something of his wife, the notorious Lucinda, the Venetian, the witch whose malignant shade still hangs over the house…'

The quiet voice had changed suddenly and become filled with such horror and revulsion that for a moment Marianne seemed to see the credulous and superstitious peasant girl she had once been. But she herself could not repress a shudder as she recalled the temple and the sensuous figure which reigned over the ruins. Instinctively dropping her voice, she asked with an eager curiosity not unmixed with fear: 'You know her – Lucinda?'

Mrs Crawfurd nodded and closed her eyes briefly, as if the better to remember.

'In fact, she is the only other Princess Sant'Anna I have known. As for forgetting her – I think if I were to live out many lives I could still not wipe her from my memory. You can have no idea what she was like. I myself have never seen such beauty as hers – so strange and yet so perfect – so demoniacally perfect! God knows you are beautiful, my dear, but next to her you would have ceased to exist. When she was there, one saw only her. Venus herself would have looked like a peasant girl beside such splendour.'

'Did you like her?' Marianne breathed, too eaten up with the desire to know to feel the slightest pique at the slighting way in which Eleonora had spoken of her own appearance. The answer came like a cannon shot:

'I hated her! God, how I hated her! And even after so many years I think I hate her still. It was because of her that when I was fifteen I fled from my parents' home with a Neapolitan dancer who, with his company, was performing at the villa. But when I was a little girl, I used to hide behind the bushes in the park to watch her pass by, dressed always in dazzling white, always covered in pearls or diamonds and always followed by her slave, Hassan, carrying her scarf, her parasol or the bag with the bread she used to feed the white peacocks in the park…'