But the provisioning of the army, or even of the city, was of scant interest to Marianne. What she wanted to know more than anything else was what had become of Jolival and Gracchus and to rejoin them as soon as possible. For all Beyle's friendly care, she felt lost without them and she felt as if nothing could be done until they were all three together again. They had travelled the world together for so long now that it had become inconceivable to envisage returning to France without them. She said as much quite frankly to her supposed husband and he did his best to soothe her impatience.
'I know what you are feeling. To tell you the truth,' he added in a burst of confidence, 'when I met you in the avenue, I was searching frantically for an old friend of mine, a Frenchwoman married to a Russian, the Baronne de Barcoff. I have long cherished a great regard for her. She seems to have quite disappeared and I shall not be easy in my mind until I have found her. But I know that, short of a miracle, I shall never do so until order has been re-established. You cannot conceive of the confusion in the city, or what is left of it. You must not expect too much all at once.'
'You mean that we are lucky to have escaped with our lives from one of the greatest disasters of all time?'
'More or less, yes. We must be patient, and allow all those who have fled time to return. Only then will we be able to search for our friends with some hope of success.'
Marianne was too much a woman not to ask what seemed to her the natural question.
'This Madame de Barcoff – are you in love with her?'
He smiled a little sadly and brushed one of his small, white, carefully manicured hands across his brow, as though to drive away a cloud.
'I did love her once,' he said at last. 'So much that surely something must remain. In those days she was called Melanie Guilbert and she was – exquisite. She is married now and I love another but, even so, there is still a great bond of affection between us and I am anxious about her. She is so fragile, so helpless—'
He seemed to be very much disturbed all of a sudden and Marianne held out her hands to him impulsively. Two days before, she had not even met him, and yet now the feelings he inspired in her were so warm that they could readily be called friendship.
'You will find her – and you will see again the woman you love. What is her name?'
'Angelina. Angelina Bereyter. She is an actress.'
'She must be very beautiful. You shall tell me about her. It will help to pass the time. You told me the other day that you would like to be my friend. Would you like us to seal that friendship today – a real friendship, such as you might feel for another man?'
Beyle laughed. 'You are a deal too lovely for that, I fear! I am only a man, after all.'
'Not to me, since you love another. My heart, too, belongs to someone else. You shall be my brother. And my name is Marianne. It's as well for a husband to know his wife's name.'
His answer was to kiss the hands she gave him, one at a time, and then, perhaps in order to conceal an emotion he was ashamed to let her see, he hurried from the room, saying he would send Barbe to her.
The brief respite allowed to Beyle by the Quartermaster-General was over the next morning. A messenger was knocking on the door at the crack of dawn to tell him he was wanted. The Emperor did not mean to waste a moment in bringing Moscow back to life again.
'He's firing off orders in all directions,' the courier said. 'There's work for you.'
There was indeed. They did not set eyes on Beyle again until the evening and by then he was exhausted.
'I don't know who was fool enough to suggest that the Emperor was overcome by the amount of destruction done to this confounded city,' he said privately to Marianne. 'He's as busy as a bee. He's ridden three times round the ruins since this morning and orders are pouring out like hail. The Kremlin is to be put in a defensive state and the same with all the fortified monasteries in the vicinity. There are orders, too, to fortify all the posting houses along the road to France and institute a regular service of couriers. Orders have been despatched to the Duc de Bassano and General Konopka in Poland to muster a force of six thousand Polish lancers – "those Polish Cossacks", as his Majesty called them – and get them here in double-quick time, since it seems that we have now run short of troops. Orders to station troops all along the way to Paris to guard our rear—'
'But you surely haven't had to do all that yourself? I thought you were concerned with food supplies.'
'I am. Men must be sent out into the country round about to bring in all the cabbages and other vegetables that have not yet been taken. There's the remainder of the hay to be got, and oats for the horses, the potatoes to be dug, the one remaining mill to be got into working order, stocks of oil and biscuit to be laid in, flour to be found from somewhere, for that is getting scarce, and lord knows what besides! At the rate he's going, he's quite capable of sending us off to get in the harvest in the Ukraine!'
'I suppose the fear that the army might run short of food is his greatest anxiety. It's natural enough.'
'Oh, if that were all,' Beyle said furiously, 'I wouldn't really mind. But in the midst of all this, he must needs think of settling his scores as well.'
'What do you mean?'
'This.' Beyle took from his pocket a large sheet of crumpled paper and spread it out on the bed where she could see it. It contained two 'wanted' notices to be displayed on walls about the city. One offered five thousand livres reward to any person giving information leading to the apprehension, dead or alive, of a certain Abbé Gauthier. This was followed by a detailed description of the wanted man. The second notice offered a further thousand livres in return for information leading to the recovery of the Princess Sant'Anna, 'one of His Majesty's personal friends, lost during the fire'. This also included a good description.
Marianne read both notices and then raised a woebegone face to his.
'He's hunting me – like a criminal!'
'No. Not like a criminal. That's just what I've got against him. Anyone at all might give you up without a qualm thanks to that word "friends", put in to deceive the unwary. If you want to know my feelings, I'd say it was – despicable.'
'It must mean that he is very angry with me, that he hates me, even! At all events, you are certainly taking a great risk, my friend, in staying with me. You ought to go away.'
'And leave you all alone? At the mercy of any inquisitive person who might give you up. I'm even beginning to wonder if I ought not to send Barbe about her – er – business.'
'She's a wonderful nurse and she seems quite devoted.'
"Yes, but she's intensely curious, which I don't care for. François caught her listening at the door of this room. What's more, she asks too many questions. Obviously she has a poor opinion of our marital relations.'
'Well, you must do as you think best. In any case, I shall see to it that I leave Moscow as soon as I have found my friend Jolival and my coachman.'
'I'll see if I can pay a visit tomorrow to the first posting house on the Paris road. Probably your friend is there. I'll bring him back with me.'
But when Beyle returned the next evening, covered with dust from his ride, he brought disturbing news. Jolival and Gracchus were nowhere to be found. They had not been seen either at the posting house or at the Rostopchin Palace, where he had also gone in search of news.
'There is one more possible answer,' he went on quickly, seeing Marianne's face crumple and her green eyes fill with tears. 'They may never have left the Kremlin. A good many people stayed there even after the Emperor had left, beginning with the troops left behind to hold the fire in check if that were possible. It's not easy to move a man with a broken leg.'