Taking her wrist once more, he led her rapidly back towards the town, ignoring her feeble protests and the sporadic efforts she still made to run back to the barn. Only when they reached the first houses did he release his hold on her at last.

'Now promise me that you will go straight back to the inn at once, and no turning back!'

'Go back-all by myself? But Arcadius—'

'No. No "but Arcadius". Back, I said. I am going back to the field.'

'But – what for?'

'To see if a little payment to the guard won't procure me a few words with him. And to give him this.'

Opening his big cloak, Jolival showed the loaf which he had been carrying all this time, tucked under his left arm. Marianne looked again from the bread to her friend's suspiciously bright eyes. It made her want to cry again but this time her reasons were different and she managed a smile instead. It was a pathetic enough little smile, in all conscience, but it tried hard to be brave:

'I'll go. I promise.'

'About time too. Now you're being a sensible girl.'

'Only—'

'What now?'

'If you do speak to him – ask him to forgive me – and say I love him.'

Jolival shrugged, raised his eyes to heaven as if to call the skies to witness the idiocy of some people, then folding his cloak around him once more, he strode off into the wind. His voice came back to her:

'Do you think that's really necessary?'

Faithful to her promise, Marianne too began to run back towards the inn, where an ostler was already lighting the big oil-lantern hanging over the gateway. It was nearly dark. The rain had stopped again for the present but the clouds piling up on the horizon were more than just the harbingers of night. She forced herself to shut her ears to the savage din which still floated after her and plunged into the inn like someone running for her life. She went straight up to her room. The single public room was too full of people, mostly men drinking mulled wine and talking over what they had just seen, and Marianne had no desire to meet anyone.

When Arcadius came up to her an hour later, she was sitting in a basket chair by the fire, her hands lying in her lap, so still that she seemed scarcely conscious. However, she looked up when she heard him come in, a questioning look in her eyes.

'I was able to get the bread to him,' Arcadius said, with a slight shrug, 'but not to speak to him. The prisoners were too excited. The search had made them nearly mad. None of the guards would have dared to break the chain – not even for gold. I'll try again later on. Now, Marianne, will you listen to what I have to say?'

He drew up a chair to the fire and sat down opposite her, leaning his elbows on his knees, his black eyes looking very steadily into hers:

'Listen – calmly? Like a sensible girl?'

When she nodded, without speaking, he went on: 'You will leave here in the morning, without me, but taking the chaise. Gracchus is more than adequate protection. He'd let himself be torn in pieces for you, that boy. No, let me speak,' he added, seeing Marianne's eyes widen and her mouth half open to protest. 'If you continue to follow the chain, we shall have to conceal your presence not only from the guards, who would not take long to spot you, as I said, but also from Jason himself. Your being here can only increase his sufferings. No man worthy of the name wants the woman he loves to see him reduced to the status of an animal. You will go on ahead, therefore, to begin preparations for his escape, while I follow on horseback.'

Marianne sighed. 'I know. You want me to go to Brest and—'

'No. You are quite wrong. I want you to go to St Malo.'

'To – to St Malo? Good heavens, whatever for?'

Jolival's small answering smile managed to combine pity, doubt and some irony.

'What I find so disheartening about you, Marianne, is the speed with which you contrive to forget the very friends who can be most useful to you. I thought you had a friend named Surcouf – indeed, I had the impression you had actually saved his life?'

'Yes, but—'

'Baron Surcouf, my love, may not be a privateer any longer, but he remains a very powerful shipowner.' Jolival spoke silkily. 'Can you tell me a better way to obtain a sound, seaworthy craft and a reliable crew? Well then, tomorrow morning you will set out posthaste for St Malo and lay siege to the gentleman. What we need is a good ship and a crew willing and able to help us get a prisoner away from Brest.'

Marianne could think of nothing to say. Jolival's words had suddenly opened up an immense perspective, dominated by the vigorous, reassuring figure of the corsair-baron. Surcouf! Why had she not thought of him before? She was trying to rescue a sailor – how could she have forgotten that supreme sailor of them all? If he would agree to help her, then Jason's freedom was assured! But would he?

'It's a good idea, Arcadius,' she said after a pause. 'But don't forget, Surcouf is a loyal subject of the Emperor's – while Jason is simply a condemned criminal. He will never do it.'

'He may not, but it is worth trying all the same. I shall own myself very much surprised if he does not give us some help at least, or else the legend and the man are very different things! At worst, you can offer to pay him for both ship and crew. Always supposing you are not robbed on the way, you have enough in that coffer of yours to buy a kingdom!' The Vicomte pointed with a long finger at one of Marianne's boxes.

Marianne's gaze followed his finger and brightened visibly. When she had left home, she had done so with the Sant'Anna jewels in her possession, fully determined to use them to further her plans should the need arise. If and when she ever reached America with the man she loved, then she meant to send the precious casket, with what remained of its contents, back to Lucca, reserving the right to pay back later anything she might have spent. Whatever happened, it was true that she had the wherewithal to buy not one but a dozen ships.

Jolival had been following the direction of her thoughts as they were reflected in her mobile countenance. When he thought she had pondered his proposal long enough, he said quietly: 'Well? You'll go?'

'Yes. You win, Arcadius. I will go.'


***

It was blowing a gale when Marianne's chaise clattered on to the Chaussée du Sillon, the narrow strip of dry land which formed the causeway linking St Malo to the mainland, and Gracchus had much ado to hold his horses, frightened as they were by the stinging lash of the salt spray bursting over the sea wall. Even in the sheltered anchorage on the other side, the close-packed masts were bowing before the wind. At the far end of the causeway, wrapped in the circle of its classic fortification, the corsair town loomed like an enormous pie made of grey granite, topped by the blue-tiled roofs of its houses, the tall church spires and the massive towers of its medieval castle.

The sea which pounded against the causeway, throwing up great, snowy bursts of spume from its heaving, greenish surface and sending white horses charging furiously against the city of men, was no stranger to Marianne. It was the same sea which, long months ago now, had caught her up in its wild raging, beaten and tumbled her as it smashed Black Fish's boat to pieces and cast them all up at last, naked and half-dead, beside the wreckers' deceitful fires. It was the same sea which battered Morvan's estate, a frenzied and malignant sea, quick to anger and to malice, relying, when the power of a direct assault had failed, on the deadly snares of its deep waters, undersea reefs and treacherous currents. The wind howled round the carriage and crept in through the small crevices around the windows, bringing with it a sharp sea-tang of salt and seaweed.

The streaming horses plunged through the echoing vault of the huge St Vincent gate and instantly their panic ceased. Behind the great ramparts, where the sea could not reach, all was comparative peace and Marianne was a little surprised to find the people going about their business as naturally as in the finest weather. Hardly a soul seemed to take notice of her tempestuous arrival. Only one of the soldiers mounting a somewhat casual guard upon the gate took the clay pipe from his mouth and remarked to Gracchus, who was shaking the water from his dripping hat: 'Bit of a blow like, eh, lad? Nor'wester… 'orses ever takes agin it.'

'So I noticed,' Gracchus responded amiably. 'And grateful I am to know it's a nor-wester, but if it's all the same to you I'd be gladder still to know where Monsieur Surcouf lives.'

The words had been addressed to the man on the gate but almost before the words were out of his mouth a crowd of people had gathered round the vehicle, all talking at once: women in calico bonnets who set down their baskets and pointed, sailors in hard waxed hats and aged fishermen in red stocking caps so prolific of hair and whisker that there was little of their faces to be seen beyond a red nose and a pipe. Everyone was offering to show the way. Gracchus stood on the box and endeavoured to make sense of the hubbub.

'Not all at once, now… for pity's sake! Is that the way?' He had gathered that all the arms seemed to be pointing in much the same direction, but still no one would consent to be quiet. He was just going to sit down again and prepare to wait patiently for the rumpus to die down when two men rather more determined than the rest took hold of the horses' bridles and began leading the chaise sedately along the street that ran like a deep cutting in between the wall and tall houses within. Marianne stuck her head out of the window in puzzlement: