'And aren't you going to suffer?'
She gave a sad little laugh. 'I'm suffering already. But I shall try and think that I have lost him, that he did not live. And besides,' she added with a sudden warmth, filled with all the intensity of her secret hopes, 'besides, I shall have other children, your children. They will be both yours and mine and I know that the first time I bear you a son my pain will be eased. Love me, now. We have talked and thought too much. Let us forget everything but ourselves… I love you… You will never know how much I love you.'
'Marianne! My love! My brave, foolish darling!' The words died as their lips joined and after that the only sounds in the small room were the plaintive sighs and moans of a woman in the throes of love.
Next morning, as Jason, Craig and Gracchus helped the innkeeper and the driver to manoeuvre the kibitka on to the ferry boat for the crossing of the Kodyma, everyone could see that Gracchus seemed to be in a remarkably bad temper and that he bore the marks of fresh scratches on his cheek.
'I wonder,' Jolival whispered in Marianne's ear, 'whether our friend did not, after all, take the village priest a lot more seriously than he made out'
She could not help smiling. 'You think—?'
'That he tried to assert his marital rights and got short shrift? I'd go bail he did. And I can't say I'm surprised. She's a fine-looking wench.'
'You think so?' Marianne remarked primly.
'Good Lord, yes! To anyone who has a fancy for that type of noble savage. Though she's no very accommodating air about her, to be sure.'
Dressed once more in her proper clothes which consisted of a full skirt and a red bodice with barbaric stripes, with a voluminous black shawl draped over all, Shankala presented an even wilder and more enigmatic figure than she had done in her torn shift the day before. Enveloped in quantities of funereal black woollen stuff as in a Roman toga, with her hair falling in thick braids on either side of her face, she stood apart from the rest at the forward end of the boat, her small bundle wrapped in red cloth lying by her bare feet, watching the farther shore as it approached.
Her refusal to cast even one single glance backwards at the village she was leaving, probably for ever, was a thing almost palpable in its intensity. Nor was it, all in all, in any way hard to understand, especially since her last action before embarking had been to spit savagely on the ground, like a wild cat, and then, thrusting out her hand with first and fourth fingers extended towards the little cluster of cottages lying white and peaceful under the rising sun, she had hurled some imprecation in a harsh, fierce voice so full of hate that it could only have contained a curse.
Marianne reflected that she for one would be only too pleased if Jolival's prediction came true and their new companion were to take the first opportunity of parting from them.
Once across the river, Jolival paid off the ferryman and they all resumed their places in the kibitka. But when Gracchus took Shankala by the arm to help her up into the seat between himself and the driver the girl tore herself free, with the same fierce, angry gesture as on the night before, and springing lightly up under the hood settled herself on the boards at Jason's feet, looking up at him with a smile that was an open invitation.
'Is there no way,' Marianne said in a voice throbbing with anger, 'of making that woman understand that she is not mistress here?'
'I'm with you there, Ma—milady,' Gracchus agreed. 'I've a good mind to toss her into the river after all and be rid of her. I'm beginning to see her husband's point, and her mother-in-law's.'
'Not so loud,' Jason said. 'You only have to know how to deal with her.'
He bent down and, taking the woman's arm, calmly but firmly obliged her to take her seat on the box, taking no notice at all of the poisonous look she darted at Marianne.
'There,' he said. 'Now that we are all settled, you may tell the driver to drive on, Gracchus.'
The man gave vent to a guttural cry to set his horses in motion and the vehicle resumed its northward journey over the same road the cossack horsemen had taken the night before.
Day after day, week after week, the occupants of the kibitka pursued their way from one posting house to the next, never departing from the main road which would bring them, by way of Uman, Kiev, Bryansk and Moscow, to St Petersburg.
They could in fact have shortened their journey considerably by going by way of Smolensk, but when they reached the venerable and ancient princely city of Kiev, generally regarded by the Russians as the cradle of their country, the travellers found the place in something like a ferment. The packed churches were reverberating to the sound of public prayers and a perfect forest of candles blazed in front of every glittering iconostasis.
The reason for it was the grave news brought to the holy city by exhausted messengers galloping weary horses. A few days earlier General Barclay de Tolly and his army had been beaten at Smolensk and had abandoned the city after setting fire to it. The chief city of the Borysthenes, one of the greatest of the Tsar's empire, had been virtually destroyed and was now in the hands of Napoleon's Grande Armée, that vast horde of four hundred thousand armed men, speaking several languages, in which Wurtembergers, Bavarians and Danes fought side by side with Schwartzenberg's Austrians, the troops belonging to the Confederation of the Rhine and the Italians under Prince Eugene. And Kiev, the holy city of St Vladimir, mourned for its dead and prayed to heaven to punish the barbarian who had dared to set foot on the sacred soil.
This news brought about the beginnings of an argument between Jason and Marianne. She was filled with joy at Napoleon's capture of Smolensk and saw no reason, now, to continue her journey to Moscow.
'If the French hold Smolensk,' she pointed out, 'we can save time and make directly for St Petersburg. We can even beg assistance—'
Jason's reply was curt and to the point.
'Assistance? For Lady Selton? Unlikely, surely? Unless you mean to make your presence known to Napoleon? Well, I mean to have nothing to do with him. We had decided to go by way of Moscow and by Moscow we shall go.'
'But he may be in Moscow before us!' Marianne cried, suddenly defensive. 'At the rate his army is advancing, it is more than likely. What is the distance from Smolensk to Moscow?' she demanded, turning to Gracchus.
'About a hundred versts,' he told her, after a rapid consultation with the driver. 'Whereas for us it is about three hundred.'
'You see?' Marianne concluded triumphantly. 'It's no use deceiving yourself. Short of making an enormous detour, by the Volga, perhaps, we can't avoid Napoleon's army. Besides, how do we know Napoleon himself won't take the road to St Petersburg?'
'You'd like that, wouldn't you, eh? Go on, admit you're longing to set eyes on your beloved emperor again!'
'He's not my beloved emperor,' Marianne retorted sharply. 'But he is my emperor and Jolival's and Gracchus's too! Whether you like it or not, we are all French and we've no cause to be ashamed of it'
'Indeed? That's not what's written on your podaroshna, my lady! You had better make up your mind. For my part, it's the Russians I need and I've no intention of making enemies of them by falling into the arms of their invaders. From now on, we travel twice or even three times as fast. I want to get to Moscow before Napoleon.'
'You want, you want! What right have you to dictate what we do? But for us you would still be held a prisoner by your dear friends the Russians! You seem very ready to forget that they are even more closely allied to England and that your own country is just now at war with your friends' friends. How do you know that these Krilovs you put such faith in are going to befriend you? You are expecting them to help you? Give you a ship? What if they slam the door in your face and will have nothing to say to you? What will you do then?'