Still nibbling her piece of bread, she had begun walking slowly back and forth across her prison, partly as a cure for impatience and partly to calm her nerves. But all at once she stopped dead, listening with all her might, while her heart beat a little faster. They were coming. There were men coming up the stairs, making all the characteristic noises of soldiers carrying weapons. Marianne's mind leapt to the conclusion that the hour of the trial had been put forward and they were coming for the prisoner. The Emperor must have decided to abandon the Kremlin.
She tried feverishly to reconstruct the route the prisoner would have to follow. He must have succeeded in negotiating the fortified perimeter. But she had been so anxious that her estimate of time could have gone very much awry. Had he really had time to reach safety?
There was a grating of bolts and Marianne stiffened, clasping her hands tightly together until the bones cracked in the way she had when striving to control her feelings. She heard people enter. Then a voice spoke, a very youthful voice but stern and carrying.
'The court awaits you, Sir. If you will come with me—'
In such time for thought as her brief imprisonment had allowed her, Marianne had not managed to decide on the right course to pursue when her substitution should be discovered. She was relying wholly upon instinct but, determined to gain as much time as she could, she had withdrawn, at the sound of approaching footsteps, to the darkest corner of her cell, keeping her back to the door.
Not until she was spoken to did she turn to see, framed in the doorway, a young captain, a stranger to her, and two grenadiers. The captain was slim and fair, straight as a ramrod and rather touching in his dignity. It was clear that he was immensely proud of the mission entrusted to him. It was his moment of glory and he was going to be cruelly disappointed.
Marianne advanced a few steps into the light that entered from the staircase. Three separate gasps of astonishment greeted her appearance. But by that time Marianne had made her decision. Gathering up her skirts, she darted through the gap between the two soldiers and plunged down the stairs, descending them like lightning before the men could recover from their surprise. She had reached the guardroom before she heard the young captain shouting: 'What the devil! Well, after her, damn you! Don't stand there gawping! Catch her!'
It was too late. Luckily for Marianne, the tower door had been left open. She was outside before the guards had even started after her. With a triumphant gasp, she plunged into the smoke as though into a protecting fog and ran straight ahead, regardless of possible obstructions, spurred on by the one thought of all escaping prisoners: to put as much ground between herself and her pursuers as possible. But the way sloped steeply uphill to the terrace and behind her she could hear shouts and yells that sounded horribly near.
She did not know the Kremlin or its exits and those portions of the upper terrace that she could see through the smoke looked hopelessly full of people. She had to find some way or other of concealing her identity if she did not want to be caught between two fires.
She was still wondering where to go when she caught sight of a tree not far from the top of the grassy slope, close up against one corner of the palace. It was an old tree, several hundred years old certainly, and its branches dropped wearily down to the ground. It was twisted with age but the mass of its foliage looked impenetrable. The noise of the wind in the leaves was like a rookery in full voice.
Running before the wind, which was now gusting strongly from the south, Marianne found herself at the top of the slope, right up against the trunk. She measured the distance with her eye and decided that in the ordinary way it should not prove too difficult to climb. But would her injured shoulder allow her to do what would have been easy for her before?
It is a well-known fact that the love of liberty can lend wings to the least able and, all things considered, Marianne had no wish to confront the anger of Napoleon. What she wanted more than anything in the world at that moment was to find her friends and be gone from that accursed city as soon as possible. Gasping with pain, but spurred on by the desperate longing to escape, she managed it. After what seemed an age but could not have been more than a few seconds, she found herself seated astride one of the great branches and completely hidden from below. She was only just in time. A bare half-minute later she saw her young captain pass directly beneath her. He was running like a hare and shouting 'Guards! Guards!' at the top of his voice, regardless of the blazing debris falling all about him.
The fugitive's respite was brief. Her situation was less urgent but no less perilous, for the conflagration raging in the city had grown to terrifying proportions since her entry into the tower. Driven by the equinoctial wind, a rain of fire was falling on the Kremlin, from tenuous sparks to flaming brands that rattled on the metal-clad roofs of the palace and the copper domes of the churches like hammer strokes on the anvils of invisible blacksmiths. With the shouts and screams that rose on all sides, it made a terrifying and fantastic symphony. The whole city was howling to heaven, a blazing, fiery inferno in which the very air breathed fire.
The green umbrella of the tree overhead gave Marianne a measure of protection from the incandescent shower, but how long would it be before even that refuge caught alight?
By peering through the branches, she could see the parade ground between the palace and the Arsenal. It was crawling with troops, all trying, at the risk of their lives, to transport the casks of powder and bales of tow to a place of safety, unavailingly, since nowhere could be counted safe any longer. More men were stationed on the palace roof and, equipped with buckets and brooms, were sweeping away the burning particles as they fell and endeavouring to cool the scorching metal sheets by pouring water on them. The great Russian citadel, with its sumptuous churches and magnificent buildings was like a threatened island ringed by a sea of flame, a plateau emerging from a volcanic eruption. Everywhere that Marianne looked she saw huge flames leaping up beyond the encircling red walls. They were already menacing the imperial stables, where an army of grooms was struggling to lead out the screaming, panic-stricken horses.
'Merciful heavens,' Marianne murmured, 'help me to get out of this!'
All at once, she saw the Emperor. He was hatless and on foot, his short dark hair and the skirts of his grey redingote blowing in the wind as he strode towards the threatened Arsenal, followed by Berthier, Gourgaud and Prince Eugene, and disregarding the frantic attempts of one of his senior officers, General Lariboisière, to deflect him from his dangerous course. But when the general tried to block his way, Napoleon merely brushed him aside with an impatient hand and continued on his way. Next, a party of gunners engaged in moving boxes of ammunition flung themselves across his path, almost going on their knees to prevent him going farther. At the same time, Murat's absurd white plumes could be seen emerging from the stables and were borne towards the Emperor on a heaving sea of men. Marianne, perched in her tree, heard someone shouting: 'Sire! I beg of you!'
'No! Get up on the terrace there with the Prince of Neuchâtel and tell me what you see,' Napoleon roared at Marshal Bessières. 'I'm not leaving here before I have to! Let every man do his duty and we shall hold out safely enough.'
Almost as he finished speaking, there came a sound like a cannon shot and the peculiar clatter of broken glass. The windows on one side of the palace had shattered. Whereupon Napoleon himself made for the terrace previously indicated in order to see for himself how close was the danger. Meanwhile, carried on the wind, there came to Marianne the echoes of the King of Naples' fluent cursing.