Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne

The young man's grey eyes widened with a look of enormous surprise. The sword slipped from his suddenly loosened grasp and clattered to the floor. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came, only a gout of blood which dribbled down his chin. He crumpled where he stood and, slowly, Marianne drew out her sword. She let it fall, without even thinking to wipe it, and went on her knees beside the wounded man. His eyes were already clouding. Her throat tightened and suddenly she wanted to cry. Her hatred had left her now that he was dying.

'You did me a great wrong, Francis – I am avenged. Now, die in peace. I have forgiven you.'

From beneath half-closed lips his eyes sought for her and his hand groped to touch her. A ghost of a smile touched his lips.

'A pity,' he murmured. 'I could – have loved you—'

He closed his eyes with a groan. It was then, as she still knelt by him, Marianne heard a fearful shriek behind her.

'My God! Francis—'

Marianne turned quickly and was just in time to jerk herself backwards to avoid being knocked down by Ivy as she cast herself sobbing onto the lifeless body. She had not heard the door open or seen the other girl enter. How long had Francis's cousin been there? How much had she heard? Marianne looked down at the graceful form, prostrate amid the swirling folds of her white gown, and frowned, wondering at the violence of her grief. Ivy was clasping Francis's body and uttering whimpering cries, like a wounded animal, out of all proportion in Marianne's estimation with the natural grief to be felt for a mere cousin. But she had little time to wonder before Ivy rounded on her, her face streaked with tears and rendered unrecognizable by grief and malice.

'This is your doing, I suppose,' she said fiercely. 'You found out at last that he did not love you, that he could not love you – and so you killed him! It wasn't enough for you to bear his name, to be his wife before the world, to have the right to serve him—'

'Serve him? You are out of your mind!' Marianne's lip curled scornfully. 'The women of my house do not serve! As for this man, I killed him in fair fight! There are two swords—'

'But only one has blood on it! You jealous little French slut, you knew it was me he loved and you could not endure it!'

'He loved you?' Marianne was genuinely astonished.

Ivy St. Albans's lovely face was transfigured with the fearful joy of flinging the searing truth in the teeth of her hated rival.

'He was my lover! For months now we have been united, body and soul. He would have married me, but neither he nor I had money. Then you turned up, you and your old fool of an aunt. It was just what we needed, a pair of silly women who asked nothing better than to drop a fortune at his feet. It was child's play for Francis to win you. Everything went off as he had hoped, better even since the old woman had the sense to die and leave you everything! But then you guessed, didn't you, that he meant to keep you tucked away down here in the country while he lived with me in London, with me and your money! It was that you could not stand—'

Marianne listened in amazement to this eruption of fury and hatred. Horrified, she saw at last the cynical calculation, of which she had been the object, and cold-blooded way in which these two had coolly set about playing on her own innocence and her aunt's goodness. Even more than the insult, which had already been wiped out, it was the contemptuous way this creature dared to speak of her aunt's memory that roused her anger.

'You would not have enjoyed my fortune for long,' she said coldly. 'Your precious Francis lost it all tonight; the little of his own he had left and everything I brought him. The master of Selton Hall at this moment is Jason Beaufort!'

The news struck Ivy like a thunderbolt. Her fine blue eyes dilated, her jaw dropped and a deathly pallor spread over her face.

'All – the whole fortune?'

'All! I have nothing left but my honour, and even that he dared dispose of. He deserved to die, you see! I could have shot him down, from behind, like a mad dog or stabbed him in the back. I gave him a chance. He lost. The worst for him.'

'And for you, also. You killed him, you shall hang!' Ivy screamed, no longer able to contain her fury. 'I shall testify against you! You dared to strike him, you, who should have been too happy just to be his humble slave! But you are forgetting the Prince of Wales. The prince is his friend and he will not let your crime go unpunished. I am here and I will not rest until I have brought you to trial and then I will tell all the lies I need. And the day they put the rope round your neck I shall be there in the front row – to cheer!'

Beside herself with rage, Ivy began calling loudly for help and ran to the hearth to pull the bell that hung there. But, quicker than she, Marianne was before her and as Ivy ran into her she clapped a hand across her mouth.

'Be quiet you little fool! You will wake the whole house—'

Biting savagely at the fingers clamped across her lips, Ivy wriggled herself free and said venomously:

'I mean to wake everyone! Lord Moira will come and he will listen to me! You will be locked up until you can be brought to trial.'

'My servants will defend me.'

'Not against the prince. They are all loyal Englishmen and to them you are only a foreigner, a nasty little Frenchwoman, a papist who has killed her husband! They will believe me—'

Marianne's brain worked quickly. But, though she tried to reassure herself, fear began to gain on her, whispering that Ivy was right. It was true. Respect for the tradition was strong at Selton Hall and for all her servants, except perhaps for Dobbs and old Jenkins, she would be only her husband's murderer. They would forget everything but her French blood and her Catholic faith. If Ivy screamed for help, then she was lost – and Ivy was going to scream, was screaming already—

In her terror Marianne seized hold of the first object that came to hand which happened to be a long duelling pistol that lay on a chest. She grabbed it by the barrel and struck with the butt. The blow caught Ivy St. Albans on the temple and she dropped without even a sigh. But this time her rival wasted no precious seconds contemplating the prostrate figure stretched in its virginal drapery beside the lifeless form of Francis. She did not even pause to find out whether Ivy still lived. She had to escape, and escape with all speed. Already, it seemed to her that she could hear people stirring somewhere in the house. They would come and find her with the two motionless bodies, they might be coming even now – with a shock of horror, she seemed to see the shadow of the gibbet already looming over her.

Without knowing how she did it, she almost staggered from the room, blundering heavily against the furniture, and dashed up the stairs to her room. There, she snatched up the pearl necklace that had been her mother's , the duchesse d'Angoulême's locket and a purse containing a little money and then, shrouded in a big, black hooded cloak, she hurried out again without a backward glance, slipped noiselessly along the darkened gallery to a small stairway built into one of the turrets. From there, she made her way to the stables without encountering a living soul.

The wind had risen, bringing with it a cold, dense rain that whipped against Marianne's face where she stood, her eyes heavy with tears, gazing at the silent mausoleum where her ancestors lay at rest, but she did not feel it. The night was so dark that the dome and the white columns loomed up, blurred and ghostly, like a mist before her eyes. It was as though the tomb of the Seltons was already receding into the past, falling back into darkness and distance in spite of the girl's desperate efforts to impress each line of it upon her memory. She thought with pain and bitterness that this was all she had left in the world, this acre of land and the marble beneath which her ancestors lay.

Driven by a compelling need to feel less wretched and alone, she pushed open the creaking gate and laid her cheek against the cold, damp stone as, when a little girl in need of love, she had run to hide her face against a grey silk skirt.

'Aunt Ellis,' she moaned, 'Oh, Aunt Ellis – why?'

It was the cry of a lost child, but there was no one to answer. Why had her quiet, sheltered life been suddenly transformed into this irretrievable disaster? Marianne felt all the incredulous terror of a passenger on board ship who suddenly exchanges the safety and comfort of his cabin for the icy tumult of the storm, finding himself snatched from his warm bed and plunged into the sea, clinging to a spar.

But she might as well have tried to warm the cold marble tombs in her arms. All was still, cold and silent. And yet, there was an agonizing pain in trying to tear herself away. Going, she would leave behind her all her childhood and all the happiness she believed that she had known.

But time was short. Back in the direction of the house, voices were already shouting. They must be looking for her even now. Then, suddenly a thick column of smoke rose above the trees and a long flame shot skywards. Marianne moved a few steps away from the mausoleum.

'Fire!' She muttered. 'Selton is on fire—'

What could have started it? Her first impulse, seeing the old house in danger, was to rush back but a sudden grim satisfaction made her pause. Let the noble old house burn rather than see it in the hands of the American! It was better so! Then there would indeed be nothing left of all her memories, nothing but the indelible scar she bore in her heart, and this white marble monument.

Brushing away the tears that ran down her cheeks with an angry gesture, Marianne went to the place where she had left her horse and climbed wearily into the saddle. Her thoughts went back suddenly to her flight from the boudoir. She had no clear recollection of how she had got out of the room but she did recall hearing some kind of dull thud as of a piece of furniture overturned. The candles on the table! Had she knocked them over? Had she been the unwitting cause of the fire? A picture crossed her mind of the two still forms left lying in the room but she thrust them back angrily. Francis was dead. What difference if his body were reduced to ashes. As for Ivy, Marianne felt nothing but hatred for her.

Standing up in the stirrups, she looked back for an instant to where, above the treetops, the roofs of Selton stood etched against the ruddy glow of the fire as though against a bloody dawn. An indistinguishable murmur of voices reached her but, for Marianne, the insubstantial barrier of trees had become a symbol, cutting her off forever from a world already falling into ruins. It was right that it should be so, and, thinking she had wasted enough time, she raised her hand in one last gesture of farewell to the monument and then, digging in her heels, made off at a canter into the woods. The wind of her going filled her ears, drowning out the roar of the fire.

In her present terrible plight, there was only one person who could help her. Her godfather. Marianne knew that if she was to save her neck, she must leave England. The abbé de Chazay was the one man capable of assisting her in this. As ill luck would have it, he was probably off on one of his long journeys. He had told her, the previous evening, that he meant to travel to Rome in answer to a summons from the Pope and, as he kissed his goddaughter goodbye, he had mentioned taking ship at Plymouth the following morning. Marianne, too, must be on that boat.

Fortunately for her, she knew the country well and there was no lane or by-way with which she was not familiar. She travelled by a short cut across country which brought her to the outskirts of Totnes, from where she had nearly twenty miles to cover to reach the great port before the tide but her mount, one of the best hunters in the stables, had strong legs.

There seemed to be a faint lightening of the darkness. The rain had come on more heavily, driving away the mist, and the moon, shining out between thick blankets of cloud, nonetheless gave sufficient light to enable Marianne to see her way without difficulty. Bent over her horse's neck, her hood pulled well down over her eyes, she hunched her back against the downpour, disregarding the water trapped in the sodden folds of her frieze cloak and concentrating wholly upon the route she had to follow.