"Young woman,' he said, 'your companion tells me that you are here against your wishes and in danger and that it is your earnest desire to return to your own place by some other way than in the company of soldiers. Is that so?'
'It is.'
'Then I may be able to help you. But I must know who you are. In these evil times we live in, faces are often not what they seem, souls even more so, and an innocent gaze may hide an unclean heart. If you want me to trust you, you must trust me first. You are a woman, yet you came here in man's clothing.'
'How will it help you to know my name?' Marianne asked gently. 'We belong to such different worlds. My name can mean nothing to you – nor is there any way for you to know that I am telling the truth.'
'Tell me, nevertheless. Why should you greet a friendly offer with suspicion? It says in this book,' he parted the dark cover softly, 'that a goose may walk with bent head but yet his eyes miss nothing. We Jews are like geese – and we know a great many more things than you might expect. Amongst others, I am familiar with many names – even in your world.'
'Very well,' Marianne said. 'I am the Princess Sant'Anna and I have incurred the Emperor's displeasure because I helped to secure the escape from prison of a man who had been as a father to me and who was then under sentence of death. And now it is for me to warn you. You are taking a grave risk in helping me.'
The old man's only answer was to take from the pocket of his long, grey gown a sheet of paper which he unfolded and laid before Marianne. To her amazement, she saw that it was one of the bills that had been posted on the walls of Moscow concerning her.
'You see,' Solomon remarked. 'I had the means of knowing whether you spoke truth.'
'Where did you get this?' she asked in an altered voice, not taking her eyes from the soiled sheet of paper.
'From outside the posting house. It seems that the men carrying the mail have left them at every place of any size all along the road to the Niemen. I make a point of picking up printed sheets. They can be interesting.'
Marianne said nothing. She felt as if she were sliding into a bottomless pit. She could never have believed that Napoleon would carry his resentment so far. Because she had been mistaken in her first impression that this was the same bill as before. The text was different. There was no longer any mention of the Emperor's friend. This time it called purely and simply for the apprehension of the Princess Sant'Anna, and the reward had been doubled.
Something snapped inside Marianne. Her world had fallen in ruins. If Napoleon's hatred was so bitter, what respite could she ever hope for? Wherever she went, his anger would pursue her and, sooner or later, he would catch up with her. She was alone and utterly helpless in a vast empire where no one was safe from the imperial wrath. Her thoughts flashed to her house in Paris, where Adelaide might already be suffering persecution from the police, and then to Corrado himself! In his determination to capture Marianne, Napoleon was capable of harrying him in his own house, or even of forcing him to appear in public or stripping him of his possessions.
The touch of Solomon's hand on her shoulder made her start. She had been so lost in her own bleak thoughts that she had not seen him rise and come round the table to her. When he spoke, she realized that he had read much of what was in her mind.
'You must go home,' he said gently. 'You have risked everything to save your kinsman and the Almighty will not forsake you. In our law it is said also that it is more blessed to be cursed than to curse and it was the Lord's hand that led you to this house. You are a great lady and yet you kissed my old wife. We are your friends – and it may be that the great emperor will never leave Russia.'
'What do you mean?'
'That it is a long road to France and the Russian winter is a fearful thing. Ataman Platov's cossacks are like locusts, they descend in their thousands and when those are destroyed they are reborn miraculously. You did well to refuse to travel with the convoy, for that, too, may never arrive.'
'But what am I going to do? What will become of me?'
'One hour before dawn, I will take you to our cemetery. It lies in a quiet spot outside the city and few Christians go there. There is a ruined synagogue where you will find a conveyance waiting, with a good horse and food enough to last you as far as Kovno. Only you must be prepared to pass as one of us. If you do as I say, you will be able to continue your journey without hindrance – and without danger.'
'Without danger!' Barbe had so far taken no part in the conversation, but now she broke in loudly. 'Say, rather, that we'll be in danger from both French and Russians. We'll be robbed at the very least!'
'No you will not. Listen.'
Then Solomon Levin explained to them the laws passed by Tsar Alexander I concerning the Jews and how these would help them. Alexander had not been blind to the profit to be had from the commercial efficiency of the Jewish people and at his coronation had conferred notable advantages on them, reserving only the trade in alcoholic beverages, but these had been counterbalanced by a number of restrictions, including that of being obliged to live in the towns, in areas called ghettoes, varying in size from a whole district down to a single street and never in the country villages. But it was on these restrictions that Solomon based his plan. For, since they were not allowed to stay in the villages, Jewish merchants, when they travelled, as they must from time to time, were given permits to go from one town to another, and these were generally respected by the authorities. The only danger might come from occasional bands of cossacks, but they had no respect for anyone, not even the Tsar's own officials.
'But you are women,' Solomon went on. "You will pass as my sister and my niece and that will give you some protection, for the cossacks do not care to soil themselves by contact with Jewish women. Moreover, the young lady will be unwell – with a contagious infection. I will give you letters to my brothers in Orcha, Borisov, Smorgoni and Vilna and so you will travel from town to town until you reach the Niemen. At Kovno, you will find my cousin, Ishak Levin. You may leave the horse and the vehicle with him and they will be returned to me in due course. At Kovno, you will be in Poland and will have nothing more to fear from the cossacks. Ishak will provide you with the means to reach Danzig. There, with a little money, you may choose what you wish to do. Danzig is a port and ships trading in contraband goods are more numerous than honest traders. The Emperor's power, too, is more theoretical than actual. His troops pass through it and it is a depot for them, but the people do not love them. What you do then is for you to decide.'
A port! Marianne started at the word. A port meant the sea, the best possible way of escape. She had been trapped in this vast country for so long that she had almost forgotten the sea existed. In an instant the old dream, so painfully buried beneath the rocks of reason and the promise that had been extracted from her, shivered and tried to raise itself again. Danzig. It was there that she had tried to make Jason go, there that she had hoped to take ship, with Napoleon's blessing, bound for the high seas and the land of liberty. It was there, perhaps, that the great vice that was crushing her would loose its hold.
All of a sudden she felt a wild, irresistible longing to reach that city and its port. The small amount of gold that she had managed to save, sewn into her chemise, might be enough to buy her a passage on one of those contraband ships of which Solomon had spoken. And after that would come the cold seas and the perilous shores of all those countries where the Emperor ruled, but there might be another port also, and another ship… Then the vast ocean, spread like a giant sail from pole to pole, and beyond the ocean – America, and another war, and that special America of Marianne's, whose name was Jason Beaufort.