'You're quite right. It was the cannon – I think it must have sent me off my head. Of course, we'd much better just walk back quietly. We've had it for tonight, anyway…' He paused, seeing Marianne burst into gasping sobs on Jolival's shoulder. 'I'm truly sorry, Marianne. Maybe we'll have more luck next time.'

'Next time! He'll be dead before then. They'll have killed him!'

'Never think that! We may be luckier than you expect. And it's nobody's fault if some other poor devil had the same idea as us and chose Christmas Eve to show a clean pair of heels.'

He was trying, in his clumsy way, to comfort her, but Marianne refused to be comforted. She pictured Jason, lying on his hospital bed with his chains sawn through, waiting for a rescue that never came. What would they do to him tomorrow when they found his fetters loose? Would the man Vidocq, perhaps, manage somehow to prevent the worst?

The little group had moved on again. Jean Ledru went ahead now, hands in his coat pockets, cap pulled down over his eyes and back hunched forward, eager to have the deck of his ship beneath him again. Marianne followed, more slowly, clinging to Jolival's compassionate arm, her mind still searching feverishly for a way to achieve the impossible and rescue Jason after all. She felt as if every step she took was carrying her inexorably farther away not only from the prison, but also from the man she loved. In the privacy of her hood, she wept, in small, hard sobs that hurt her throat.

When they reached the waterfront, Jean hurried straight to his boat, not without an uneasy sidelong glance at the gendarme who was strolling up and down with hands behind his back with every appearance of a man waiting for something. Jolival bent and spoke quietly in Marianne's ear:

'We had better go back to Recouvrance, child. Wait here, while I go and fetch our bags and find out what has become of Gracchus. He must have gone with the sailors.'

Marianne nodded to show that she had understood and while he made his way to the boat she remained where she was, her arms hanging at her sides, drained alike of all her courage and all capacity for thought. Then, without warning, the gendarme who had been walking towards Jolival had rushed up to her instead and grabbed her by the arm, paying not the least attention to her feeble cry of fright.

'Good God! What are you dawdling here for? As if we weren't in enough danger already. For the lord's sake, get on board! We've been sitting here gnawing our fingers' ends for half an hour waiting for you!'

For a second, Marianne very nearly fainted from shock for underneath the gendarme's cocked hat she had recognized the face of Vidocq. It was Vidocq himself, although scarcely recognizable as the same man. Then all other feelings were swept away in a sudden burst of anger:

'You? You were the one who got away? It is you they are looking for – and meanwhile Jason—'

'Jason is already aboard, you brainless idiot! Up with you, now, and get aboard!'

He half-lifted and half-threw her up on to the deck where the crew was already busy about the business of casting off. Then, while she practically fell into Jolival's arms, he vaulted lightly on to the gunwale and strolled forward to the mainmast where he posted himself conspicuously with one foot on a coil of rope, so as to give the port officers the full opportunity of observing his uniform.

All around them, the agitation in the town seemed to have subsided for the present. The bells were ringing for mass and the good people of Brest, in this instance, were putting God before man.

Just then, the figure of another gendarme hoisted itself out of the cabin. The face was thin, haggard and unshaven under the cocked hat but the eyes were full of laughter.

'Marianne!' he called softly. 'Come! I'm over here!'

She tried to speak, tried to express her joy, but her recent alternations of hope and fear, terror, grief and shock had used up all her resistance. She had just strength to tumble headlong into his arms and he, although barely able to stand upright himself, found somehow the strength to hold her to him. For a long moment, they clung to each other in silence, too happy and too deeply moved for speech. Sails flapped around them, climbing rapidly up the mast. Barefooted sailors ran noiselessly about the deck. Jean Ledru at the tiller gave the faintest shrug and turned his eyes away from the couple who seemed to have forgotten that the world existed.

Vidocq, however, remarked from his observation post: 'If I were you, I should go and sit down under the gunwale where you can't be seen. Even a fool of an exciseman or a drunken soldier might think there was something odd about a policeman going hunting escaped convicts with a woman in his arms!'

Without a word, they did as he suggested and found a sheltered corner where they settled like a pair of lovebirds in a nest. Gently, Marianne took off the ridiculous cocked hat and let the salt wind ruffle Jason's hair. As she did so, she glanced up, automatically, at the sky. All the stars were out, and they were many more than nine.

The night of miracles had kept its promise.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

That Justice be Done

While the Salnt-Guénolé with Jean Ledru's skilled hand on the tiller ran with the wind on her quarter for Cape St Mathieu and Le Conquet and the coast of Brittany slipped by like a ragged ghost in the darkness, François Vidocq explained:

'Late that afternoon, there had been a serious accident in the prison shipyards. A mast which was undergoing repairs in the dry dock had come crashing down on a group of prisoners stacking timber on the quayside. One man had been killed and a number seriously injured. The prison sick bay, somewhat grandly styled the hospital, had been full in a moment, so that Jason Beaufort who was now considered pretty well recovered had been returned at once to the communal dormitories. Fortunately, owing to the haste with which the move was accomplished, the business of chaining him to another prisoner had been put off until the next day and he had merely been fastened to the bail with the rest.

'Knowing what your plans were, I had to get to you fast and warn you that it was all changed, and at the same time not let slip the wonderful chance offered by your vessel. Sawing through Beaufort's chain was a matter of minutes – I'm not without experience at that game.' He grinned. 'My own were done already. The next thing we had to do was to find a way of getting out by the front door. Beaufort could walk. He was sufficiently recovered for that, but not to go climbing walls. So I did the only possible thing – knocked out two gendarmes and stole their uniforms, putting them carefully out of harm's way in a nice quiet place, all neatly gagged and bound.'

'Not as quiet as all that,' Jolival commented sourly. 'It didn't take them long to discover them, to judge by how soon they sounded the alarm!'

The Vicomte was suffering from sea sickness. Stretched at full length alongside a heap of ropes, as much to be out of the way of the boom which swept low across the deck at the end of every tack as to spare himself any unnecessary movement, he lay staring in a determined way at the dark sky, knowing full well that the mere sight of the sea would only make matters worse.

'I'm quite sure they've not been discovered yet,' Vidocq stated categorically. 'They are in the rope loft and no one will set foot there until the morning. And, believe me, I know the way to bind and gag a man.'

'Yes, but the alarm was given—'

'Yes… but not for us! Someone else must have decided to try Christmas Eve to make his escape. It's not something we thought of – he paused – 'but then I suppose we can't claim a monopoly where escape's concerned.'

Marianne cried out at that: 'But then, perhaps they may not be looking for you at all?'

'Oh, yes, they will. Even if they've not discovered the gendarmes yet, they're bound to have noticed our absence very soon. Once the alarm had been given, there was no reason for the others to keep mum. Our best hope is in the fact that they'll probably be looking for us along the coast and in the open country. It's practically impossible for a convict to get hold of a boat, especially one like this, even with outside help. Most of them aren't rich, you know…'

He continued to expatiate for a little while on his private philosophy of escape, its techniques and the various opportunities which could arise, but Marianne soon ceased to listen. She leaned back against the side of the boat, feeling the wind in her hair, with Jason's head in her lap. He was still very weak, and his weakness touched Marianne and gave her at the same time a secret source of joy, for like this he belonged to her completely, he was hers, a part of her, flesh of her flesh like the child she had lost, like the children she would give him…

Neither of them had spoken very much since leaving Brest, perhaps because they had too much to say and also because from now on they had all of life before them. It stretched ahead, limitless as the ocean which was all around them, leaping and jumping at their heels and making deep, moist panting sounds, like a pet animal whose master had returned after a long absence. At one point Marianne had thought that Jason was asleep, but when she bent over him she saw his eyes wide open and very bright and she knew that he was smiling.

'I had forgotten the sea smelled so good,' he murmured, holding the hand which he had not let go for a moment against his rough, unshaven cheek.

He had spoken very quietly, but Vidocq had heard and laughed: