Marianne and the Crown of Fire

'Yes,' she said, in what was almost an undertone. 'It's really me… Did you – did you think I was dead?'

'No, of course not. Craig told me you were safe and had managed to reach Napoleon. I'm only surprised because I'd not thought to see you here. It's so unexpected—'

Marianne released herself then and stepped back to look at him. Could he really be just the same as she remembered him? There was still the same tall, lean, active figure, the same strongly marked features, the same face, too deeply tanned ever to revert to its natural whiteness, the same hawk-like profile, the same brilliant eyes – and yet it suddenly seemed to her that she was looking at another man, a man she did not know.

What was it? Was it in the hard twist to the mouth, a certain weariness in the eyes or something distant in his whole attitude? It was as if he had suddenly removed himself into another world. Still gazing at him intently, she nodded slowly.

'So unexpected?' she repeated after him. 'Yes, you are right. It's quite incredible that we should meet like this! Especially since you have really done nothing at all to make it happen.'

There was a flash of the old, mocking smile that she had always loved.

'Don't talk nonsense. How could I have done? There were armies between us, and a whole vast country.'

'You knew I was in Moscow. Why didn't you come back? Why didn't you look for me? That woman who tried to kill me, Shankala, she told us before she died that you had gone with your friend Krilov, without a thought for me! I was alone, lost in a doomed city, and you could not know what would become of me, and yet you left me.'

He shrugged a little wearily and the light that had come into his blue eyes a moment before died suddenly.

'I had no choice, but you had! I thought you would have followed me when the cossacks took me.'

'Haven't you heard what prevented me?' She turned her head sharply to where Craig O'Flaherty, seeing them together, had paused beside a stack of empty casks a few yards off and was watching them.

'Yes, when O'Flaherty joined me, I heard then. But when I left Moscow I did not know. I thought – that Napoleon was near and you had made your choice.'

'Made my choice!' Marianne said bitterly. 'Is there any choice to be made when everything is burning and collapsing and dying all round you? I had to think of survival before I could start making any choices! While you—'

'Come. We can't stand here. It's too cold.'

He would have taken her arm to lead her back to the inn but once again she moved away, leaving the remainder of her sentence unspoken. For a moment or two they walked side by side in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, and Marianne's throat contracted as the conviction came to her that never again would they be reunited, even in spirit.

As they came level with the Irishman, Jason paused for an instant.

'All's ready now,' he said shortly. 'We sail with the tide. Weather's fairing up.'

Craig nodded and with a smile for Marianne in which she seemed to read both sorrow and a hint of compassion, he went on without a word to where the Smaaland lay.

Silence fell again between them, broken only by the drunken singing of three sailors reeling gloriously from a waterside tavern. Marianne was struggling to still the frantic beating of her heart beneath her furs. It seemed to have got colder all at once, although the wind had dropped, but then she realized that the cold was inside herself. It was spreading from the numbness round her heart.

'You are going?' she asked after a moment.

'Yes. Our ship is fit to sail again – and we have wasted too much time already.'

She gave a tiny laugh. 'Yes, you're right. You have wasted a deal of time to be sure.'

Did he sense the bitterness in her tone? Abruptly, he seized her by the arm and drew her into the deep shadow of a doorway where they were comparatively sheltered from the wind.

'Marianne,' he begged, 'why do you say that? You know very well how things stand with us just now! You know I'm going to the war, that I'm no longer my own man, that I have no future to look forward to. It's true. I have wasted too much time, for my time is my country's and my country is at war. We agreed that you should join me later on, remember? Have you forgotten that?'

'No. I think it's you who have forgotten – forgotten even me!'

'This is madness!'

"Very well then. There is one thing that has not even occurred to you. Ever since we met just now, it has not once crossed your mind to ask what I am doing here, how I escaped from Moscow and what has happened to me since. No! It does not interest you. Craig asked me, and I didn't tell him because I was in too much haste to see you. But then Craig is my friend!'

'And what am I?'

"You?' She uttered a tiny laugh, full of infinite sadness, and shrugged her shoulders faintly. 'You – are a man who loved me once – and who loves me no longer.'

'I do! I swear I do – I love you still!'

All at once he was again the passionate lover of their nights on the hard beds of those posting houses in the empty steppe and the forest. His arms went round her, drawing her to him, and his breath was warm on her face, but she did not return his embrace. Something inside her remained frozen.

'Marianne,' he implored her, 'listen to me! I swear to you as I hope for salvation that I've not stopped loving you. Only – I no longer have the right.'

'The right? Oh yes, the war – I see,' she said wearily.

'No! Listen! Anyone who says that we can ever escape our destiny is a fool or a dreamer! We can never break free from the mistakes that we have made. We must carry them with us for as long as it pleases God to make us! Because we loved each other, you and I, we have done everything we could to bend fate to our will. We've run to the ends of the earth – but however far we've gone, fate has caught up with us. It is stronger than we are.'

'But – what do you mean? What fate?'

'Mine, Marianne. The fate that in my stupidity I forged for myself, out of disappointment, anger, jealousy, call it what you will. Crazy as it seems, it caught up with me back there in St Petersburg, in a city that for us Americans might almost as well be in the middle of Africa. I thought, you know, that I might have some trouble making myself known to the Krilovs, who were my father's friends. I thought that they might well have forgotten the very existence of the last of the Beauforts. Do you know what I found when I reached their house?'

Marianne shook her head. There was something rather frightening about the way he was leading up to this and she was beyond speech. She knew that he was concealing something terrible, something that was going to hurt her very much. It might have been some attempt to soften the blow that made him lower his voice almost to a whisper.

'I found the Krilovs' youngest son – Dimitri – just returned from a voyage to America. His father had sent him to try and find out what had become of us and to renew the old ties, which might lead to some commercial advantage nowadays. He was in Charleston.'

"Yes-well?'

'My – Pilar, whom we thought locked up for good in a Spanish convent, Pilar has come back to me.'

Marianne was conscious of a sudden surge of anger. So this was his destiny? That wretched woman who had done her utmost to send her husband to his death on the scaffold? Who had come near to killing her, Marianne, also! Was this what was worrying him?'

'Well?' she cried fiercely. 'What does it matter if she has come back? You can send her packing!'

'No. I can't. Not any more. I have no right to do it. She – she has come back with a child, my child. My son.'

'Oh—!'

Marianne said nothing more, nothing but that one tiny sound, but it held all the cruel anguish of a dying breath. Jason was right. Fate, that fell and cunning sergeant, had caught up with them. Their long, unremitting struggle against it was over at last.