Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne and the Privateer

Lying there in the thick darkness to which her eyes had not yet grown fully accustomed, Marianne was conscious, amid these useless regrets, of a growing, insidious fear which she did her best to thrust away. She knew she must not think about the increased danger to Jason arising from her abduction. She had to keep a clear head and a cool brain if she was to fight at all, and the first thing was to get some sleep. Her aching body and her eyeballs parched with weariness told her that.

She snuggled further down into the hay and closed her eyes again, forcing herself, as she used to do when she was a little girl and frightened of something, to recall the prayers learned in baby-hood to drive away the fearful shadows of the night. But still her mind would keep returning to Jason and to the moments they had spent together, to the fierce pleasure, half-way between ecstasy and pain, which she had felt in his arms and he in hers, the sweetness of their kisses when their first desire was slaked, slaked only to return again with renewed fervour, and to the wrench of their final parting… They had had so little time. Free, they could have drowned whole days and nights in love, surfacing only to gaze at each other, dazzled by the glory of their happiness, then sinking back again beneath the waves.

So it was that despite her fetters, despite the peril hanging over her, Marianne was smiling when she fell asleep at last, like a tired but happy child, and her lips still shaped the words: 'Jason, I love you… I love you, love you, love you…'

Daylight enabled Marianne to take a more exhaustive look at her restricted domain. The hayloft occupied the upper part of a steep-pitched roof-space and the length of the main beam and the impressive structure of timbers which formed the frame suggested that the whole must be of considerable size. At present it was rather more than three-quarters filled with huge bales of hay, too dry and brittle to have come from this year's harvest. The smallest spark would be enough to set the whole lot blazing and Marianne understood why she had not been left a light the night before.

It was possible to see fairly well during the daytime by reason of a long, narrow opening, like a loophole in the end wall, which could be seen to be very thick. There was also something like a small skylight in the roof itself but it was too small to offer the least chance of escape. Marianne thought she would be lucky to get her head through – and even that with a strong risk of getting stuck. Her chain was long enough to enable her to reach both the slit-window and the skylight. The glass was extremely dirty and dusty but she was nevertheless able to make out the tall slate roofs, noble chimneys and gilded weathervanes of a great house rising above some large trees. One of the towers was flying the standard of Spain and Marianne knew that her guess had been right. She was at Mortefontaine. Farther away and a little to the right, the smoke from a number of chimneys indicated the presence of a considerable village.

The slit, on the other hand, offered, besides a pleasant draught of cool morning air, a view of a broad, curving expanse of water dotted with small wooded islets already beginning to take on the golden tones of autumn. A light mist was rising from the water, which was opal-coloured in the early light, and the smooth trunks of the whispering poplar trees and the silvery boles of the birches with their crowns of pale gold were like the sentinels guarding some enchanted domain. All around lay wooded hills and gentle valleys, and Marianne, standing with her cheek pressed against the stone, thought to herself that she had rarely seen a lovelier, more idyllic landscape. If this was where Queen Julie lived, she understood why she seemed in no haste to leave it for the sombre magnificence of Madrid and the arid sierras. In this favoured spot, life must pass sweetly. Surely the nature which could bring violence and force into such a setting must be singularly warped and twisted.

The loft itself seemed to be at the top of a fairly high building, a barn perhaps, which also stood on an island, since they had taken a boat to reach it.

Apart from the mountain of hay, the furnishings of Marianne's prison were minimal. In the darkest corner were a metal basin, a chipped earthenware pitcher which probably contained water, a cake of dark soap, a couple of cleanish, though ragged dishcloths, apparently intended to do duty as towels, and a large bucket for slops. Still, the prisoner might think herself lucky that her captors had thought to provide her with any means of washing herself at all.

Round about midday, big Sanchez appeared, bringing her food which consisted of some cold meat, stale bread, a lump of cheese, so hard that it seemed unlikely to yield to attack by anything less than a butcher's cleaver, and some rather elderly fruit. But Marianne was hungry enough to set to with a fair appetite for even this unprepossessing repast. While she ate, Sanchez attended to the chores, emptying the bucket and refilling the water jug. Finally, he glared ferociously at the prisoner and pointing one knobbly finger at the food announced: 'No more today. Me back tomorrow.'

This was one way of warning her to make her provisions last, but all things considered it was rather good news than otherwise. At least Marianne was sure of seeing her gaoler only once a day, which left her more liberty to ponder on a means of escape. It still remained to be seen, though, whether Pilar or any of her associates meant to visit her at all.

The first step towards regaining her freedom was to rid herself of the chain, but in spite of all her efforts to drag the iron ring over her slender hand, including a lavish application of the dark soap to make it slide more easily, she only succeeded in chafing the flesh so much that by nightfall her hand was swollen to twice its normal size. The only hope of release lay in somehow opening the padlock which held the ring fast. But how, and what with?

This lowering realization produced a burst of tears which at least had the advantage of easing her pent-up nervous state and making her begin to look a little on the bright side again. It was now twenty-four hours since she and Crawfurd had been captured. Eleonora would certainly have alerted Talleyrand, if not the police. The two of them would surely make some efforts to trace them, and Talleyrand knew where Pilar had sought refuge. But would it occur to him that her disappearance was in any way connected with that silent, unsmiling young woman whose sole concern seemed to be to keep out of trouble and procure herself powerful protection? He would be more likely to think that Crawfurd had over-estimated the influence of his friends in the prison service and that the two incautious visitors had been recognized, arrested and incarcerated in their turn. Since Marianne had returned to Paris illegally it would be somewhat awkward to go to Savary and ask for her, while any approach to Napoleon was at once ruled out of court by his recent unfriendly note to the Prince of Benevento. There remained Jolival. But he was not due back for days yet and, even supposing he were to set out in search of her the very instant he returned, how long might it be before he came on any trace of her? Finally, even if he did follow her tracks to Mortefontaine, how could he possibly hope to obtain permission to search the Queen of Spain's grounds? Pilar's plans had indeed been well laid and efficiently carried out.

The logic of this train of thought soon overcame Marianne's temporary optimism and she fell asleep at last in a mood of deep depression.

Several days passed in this way, all desperately dull and very much alike. Sanchez appeared regularly to perform his duties as attendant, but he remained only a few minutes and Marianne had no wish for him to stay longer. He seemed to have nothing to say for himself and when she tried to talk to him she elicited nothing beyond a few unintelligible mumbles. Neither Pilar nor her accomplices bothered to come near her, a fact which made the prisoner feel in a curious way both relieved and abandoned.

As time passed, hope declined also. There was no way for her to escape unaided and she could not count on any assistance from her gaoler. At the same time, the workings of her fevered brain brought her little by little to a curious mental state of fatalistic resignation. She felt as if she were already removed from the world of the living, and was very sure that before long Jason would be so also. Then, on the day when Pilar, triumphant under the widow's weeds which would swathe her from head to foot, came to tell her that Jason was dead, there would be nothing left for her but to goad the vindictive Spanish woman to such a pitch of fury that she would not delay Marianne's own death longer. Her only hope now, in her prison cell, was in a better life hereafter.

Yet in spite of everything, although she herself was not fully aware of it, Marianne's busy brain was hard at work. There was something about that loft which was not quite right, although it had taken her some time to realize what it was. In fact, that something was the size of the huge bales of hay, some of which still retained their osier bindings.

Contemplating first the bales and then the exiguous dimensions of the door through which Sanchez was in the habit of coming, it was borne in on Marianne that the hay could not possibly have entered the loft that way and that there must therefore be another way in, probably through a trap-door in the floor.

It was true that even if she were to succeed in finding the trap-door she would not be much nearer to gaining her freedom. She still had the chain to deal with and the distance was clearly far too great to jump. But the search for it did provide, if not a hope precisely, at least a way of occupying her time, and so she set about clearing the hay from the floor within the limits of her chain, moving it to a heap on one side and then shifting the heap when the first section explored showed no sign of an opening.