Shankala, however, instead of following Jason, had turned aside and was taking a parallel path on the nearer side of the heaped-up logs. Marianne, observing her eagerly, saw her set off at a run towards the rising ground which marked the end of the river harbour. The gipsy's intention was clear. She meant to meet Jason coming the other way.

Unable to stay where she was a moment longer and impelled by a curiosity she could not control, Marianne left the inn in her turn and hurried down to the river. Jealousy, a primitive instinct, drove her after Jason, a jealousy she could not have justified or explained. She only knew that she wanted to see what Jason would do when he came face to face alone with the woman who had made no secret of her intentions towards him.

Rounding the first log pile and coming to the river she saw nothing at all, for a curve in its course hid everything beyond. Her feet made no sound on the close-packed sand and she began to run. But when she reached the bend she clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle an exclamation and shrank back into the deep shadows between two piles of logs.

Jason was there, a few yards away from her. He had his back to her and standing facing him was Shankala. She had let fall her dress and was standing naked before him in the moonlight.

Marianne's throat felt dry. The witch was beautiful beyond a doubt. With the moon's rays silvering her brown skin she looked like a water sprite emerging from the shining river and born of its substance. Her arms hung loose at her slender sides, palms outward, her head was flung slightly backward, the eyes half-closed, and she stood quite still, allowing a sensuality so powerful as to be an almost palpable thing to work its own magic. Only the slight quickening of her breath, the rhythmic heaving of her heavy, round yet perfect breasts, betrayed her desire for the man before her. Her attitude was precisely that of the statue of Dona Lucinda in the temple at the Villa Sant'Anna and Marianne almost cried out at the resemblance.

Jason, too, seemed turned to stone. From her hiding place, Marianne could not see the expression on his face but the total stillness of his body clearly betrayed a kind of fascination. Marianne felt weak and red lights danced before her eyes. She was forced to lean back against the rough tree trunks, incapable of taking her eyes from the scene that held them yet longing desperately to sink into the water if Jason yielded to temptation. The silence and the stillness seemed to last for ever.

Suddenly Shankala moved. She took a step towards Jason, then another. Her eyes were gleaming and Marianne, in torment, dug her nails into the palms of her hands. The woman's panting breath filled her ears like a rushing wind. She was moving closer to the man who even now had not moved. One step… and one more. She was about to touch him, to cling to him with that form whose very walk was vibrant with desire. Her lips were slightly parted, showing the small, sharp, carnivorous teeth. Marianne wanted to cry out in terror but no sound came from her throat, she was paralysed with shock. In another instant the love of her life would crumble at her feet, like a god with feet of day.

But Jason had stepped back. His outstretched arm touched the woman's shoulder and held her at a distance.

'No,' he said.

Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he turned away and strode swiftly in the direction of the inn, unaware of Marianne still clinging to the piled logs in her shadowed corner, weak and spent, yet filled with a relief so shattering that she almost swooned with it. For a long moment she stayed where she was, her forehead drenched with sweat, her eyes closed, listening to the frantic drumming of her heart return to normal.

When she opened her eyes again the river bank was deserted so that for a moment she wondered if she had not dreamed it all, but when she looked more closely she could just make out a running figure moving away towards the point where the bank became a cliff. Then she too turned back towards the inn. Her legs were trembling so that she could barely climb the steep wooden stair that led up to the bedrooms and at the top she had to pause for a moment to get back her breath before she dragged herself to her own door and pushed it open.

'Where have you been?' Jason's voice said curtly.

He was there, standing in the broad, white swathe of moonlight. She thought that he looked huge and reassuring, like a lighthouse in a storm. Never had she needed him so much and giving a little moan she threw herself into his arms, shaken by a paroxysm of sobbing that swept away all the dreadful fear that had overwhelmed her.

He let her cry for a little without speaking, only petting her like a child and stroking her tumbled hair with a gentle hand. Then, as the violence abated, he put his hand under her chin and tilted up her tear-stained face.

'Idiot,' was all he said. 'As if I could want any woman but you.'

An hour later Marianne was asleep, tired out and lulled by the happy thought that Shankala, having failed, would give up the attempt and must already have made up her mind to part from her travelling companions. She had seen her running off towards the cliff… Perhaps she meant never to return…

But when, at daybreak, they all gathered by the kibitka, into the shafts of which their new driver was engaged in putting fresh horses, the gipsy was there, as cool and distant as if nothing at all had happened. Without a word she took her place by Gracchus on the box and Marianne, smothering a sigh of disappointment, could only comfort herself with the thought that Shankala had not so much as glanced at Jason as she passed him.

This was such slender consolation that when they drew up that evening at Darnitsa, in the midst of resin-scented pinewoods, she could not resist taking Gracchus aside. His relations with the gipsy had not notably improved since the village on the Kodyma but at least the extraordinary girl had condescended to exchange a few words with her so-called husband.

'How long are we to be forced to endure this Shankala?' Marianne asked him. 'Why does she stay with us? It's clear she doesn't do it because she likes us. So why does she persist in staying?'

'She is not staying with us, Mademoiselle Marianne, or not in the way you mean.'

'No? Then what is she doing?'

'She's hunting!'

'Hunting?'

'I can't imagine what kind of game – apart from Monsieur Beaufort, of course.' Marianne could not resist that jibe at least.

She had expected him to agree with her in that, but Gracchus shook his head, frowning.

'I thought so too, at first, but it's not that. Oh, she'd have got him if she could, of course, combining pleasure with business—'

'Business? I understand less and less.'

'You'll soon see. What Shankala is after is revenge. She's not coming with us, she's following the man who cast her off and delivered her up to the hatred of the village women. She has sworn to kill him and I think she hoped, by seducing Captain Beaufort, to make him the instrument of her revenge by persuading him to kill her former husband.'

Marianne shrugged impatiently. "This is madness. How does she hope to find the man again in a country this size?'

'That may not be as difficult as you might think. The cossack, whose name, by the way, is Nikita, has gone off to fight the French. We are going the same way, and so she knows. Don't worry, she asks about the cossack troop at every posting house. Not only that, but she knows precisely what her Nikita is after.'

"And what is he after?'

'To win the prize. Become rich and famous, noble and powerful—'

'Gracchus,' Marianne interrupted him with a good deal of impatience, 'if you can't bring yourself to talk more clearly you and I are going to fall out. What is all this nonsense?'

Then Gracchus embarked on what sounded like the wildest fairytale. He explained how, a short time before, a fantastic story had blazed through steppes and forests like wildfire. Count Platov, the almost legendary Ataman of the Don Cossacks and now the acknowledged leader of all the companies, or sotnias, of other regions, had promised, just as in the chivalrous tales of old, to give his daughter's hand in marriage to any cossack, whoever he might be, who should bring him Napoleon's head.

At that the fever had mounted in every cossack village, or stanitsa, and every man who did not own a wife had risen up in answer to the great chief's call, and in the hope of winning the fabulous prize. They had polished up their weapons, saddled their horses with the high wooden saddles covered with sheepskins, and pulled on their boots. Some of them in their frenzy had even contrived, more or less discreetly, to do away with wives who had suddenly become an embarrassment.

'Shankala's husband was one of those,' Gracchus concluded. 'He claims to be certain of winning the Ataman's daughter, but where he gets his certainty, don't ask me. Even Shankala doesn't know.'

'Out of an even greater conceit than the rest of his fellows!' Marianne exclaimed indignantly. 'These savages have no idea! The Emperor's head indeed! I ask you!' Then, with an abrupt change of tone, she added: 'But Gracchus, does this mean the woman was innocent when they tried to drown her? I must say I find it hard to believe.'

Evidently Gracchus did too. He pushed back his cap and scratched his red thatch, shifting from foot to foot, then letting his fingers stray to the still visible marks of the gipsy's fingernails.

'That,' he said, 'is a matter we did not touch on. With a woman like that you never know. All she told me was that once his first passion died down Nikita had neglected her and relegated her to the position of a servant to his mother. All things considered, if that's true and she did deceive him, he'd no one but himself to blame. It seems to me he was a poor enough fellow.'

'Indeed? Well, that's no reason to go and find out. And if you want us to remain friends, Gracchus-Hannibal Pioche, I'd advise you not to let Shankala use you to obtain her revenge either. Supposing you were to come out of it alive, I wonder how your grandmother, the laundress in the rue de la Revoke, would welcome such a daughter-in-law?'

'I know well enough. She'd stick out two fingers in the sign against the evil eye and then she'd be off to the cure to sprinkle her with holy water. Then she'd show both of us the door. Don't worry, Mademoiselle Marianne, I've no wish to reduce still further what little chance we have of ever seeing the rue Montorgueil and your house in the rue de Lille again.'

He touched his cap and was moving away to help the driver unhitch the horses when Marianne, struck by the cynicism of his last words, called him back.

'Gracchus! Do you really think that in trying to reach the Emperor we are running into serious danger?'

'It's not so much because we are trying to reach him, it's just that when the Little Corporal goes to war he doesn't do things by halves and we're likely to find ourselves, as they say, caught between the hammer and the anvil. And random shots aren't always as random as all that! But we'll do the best we can, won't we?'

And, whistling his favourite marching song more furiously out of tune than ever, Gracchus went off cheerfully to attend to his everyday duties as groom, leaving Marianne to her thoughts.

CHAPTER TWO

The Duel

On the eleventh of September they came to the outskirts of Moscow. It was a fine, bright day and the earth basked in the sunshine of late summer. But the warm light and the beauty of the countryside could not dispel the sense of tragedy that loomed in the air.

The road passed through the pretty, picturesque village of Kolomenskoy, with its old, brightly painted wooden cottages, large pond with several families of ducks upon it and clumps of trees in which the pale trunks of birches mingled with slender, fragrant pines and rowans borne down with great bunches of crimson fruit.

But farther west the guns were firing and there was an endless procession of vehicles of every kind, from tradesmen's carts to gentlemen's carriages, driven by rigid, sleepwalking figures with set faces and haunted eyes. Plants and buildings alike had their freshness smothered in a choking pall of dust.

In this crowd of refugees the kibitka's progress was like that of a swimmer struggling against the current of a mighty river. For three days they had been unable to obtain a change of horses. All those that could be found were already between the shafts. The stables were empty.