It was a kibitka, one of the great four-wheeled covered wagons, not unlike those used by the American colonists, which the Russian merchants were accustomed to employ to transport themselves and their merchandise from town to town and from fair to fair.
Heavier, certainly, and also slower than the various other conveyances in use on Russian roads, the kibitka possessed a definite advantage in that it was more stoutly built, less conspicuous and able to carry more passengers, not to mention a great deal more baggage, than would have fitted into a telega or a troika. It would take all the fugitives, whereas normally at least two carriages would have been needed to accommodate the whole party. And finally, Richelieu would be less likely to look for the Princess Sant'Anna under the hood of a countrified wagon than amid the cushions of a more fashionable type of vehicle.
But Gracchus's genius did not stop short at the choice of transport. Poking her head inside, Marianne saw that it contained a number of rolled-up mattresses, also designed to serve as seats, and a pile of new blankets, as well as cooking utensils and provisions. There were also spades and an assortment of weapons. Last of all, there were suits of clothes which, although they might not have been cut in London or Paris, were nonetheless respectable. These were evidently intended for Jason and Craig. It looked as though Gracchus had laid out the money Jolival had given him to advantage, and with a speed that no one else could have hoped to rival.
"It's like magic," Marianne said happily, emerging from the wagon to allow the two men to change their clothes. "However did you manage it, Gracchus? There can't have been any shops open at this hour?"
Gracchus blushed crimson, as he always did when his mistress paid him a compliment, and chuckled.
"Well, it's not so wonderful, Mademoiselle Marianne. You can get hold of anything, at any hour of the day or night here, if you've got the money. You only have to know what doors to knock on."
Craig O'Flaherty's coppery head peered out from inside the wagon. "Well, you seem to know the right doors, me lad, and that's for sure! But I've a nasty notion there may yet be one thing we're lacking. You'll not have heard, maybe, what we poor prisoners were told by an Italian fellow back in the castle there for his misfortune, but it seems that if you want to travel in these parts, and more important, if you want to be able to get fresh horses on the road, you need to have some kind of passport—"
"It's called a podoroshna," Gracchus agreed placidly and pulled from his pocket a paper bearing an official stamp freshly applied. He waved it at the Irishman. "Like this. But to be exact, Monsieur Craig, the podoroshna is nothing more or less than a permit to use post horses. You can do without one if you've got the money, but it's a great saving and it ensures that the people at the posting houses treat you with some respect. Anything else you'd like to know, Monsieur Craig?"
"No, nothing else," said the Irishman, gloomily extricating his large person from the cart, revealing himself clad in a pair of baggy trousers tucked into short boots and a gray shirt buttoned at the neck and caught in at the waist with a leather belt. "Except that I suppose I shall have to get used to these new fashions somehow and that I could do with a shave."
"And so could I," added Jason, also emerging and dressed in similar garb. "We look just like our late keepers."
Gracchus ran a critical eye over them, then nodded approvingly.
"Not bad at all. In any case, it's all that I could find. And if you'll take my advice, you'll stick to your beards. They make you both look like proper little sons of holy Mother Russia and that's the best thing we could ask."
Gracchus, in fact, had shown himself a worthy general, and not liking to let his mistress travel deeper into enemy territory under her own name, he had taken it upon himself to have the podoroshna made out in the name of Lady Selton, an English traveler, and consequently eccentric, whose object was to see something of the tsar's empire and to study the patriarchal customs of his people.
Gracchus, Jason and Craig were entered on this all-important document as the lady's servants, while to Jolival, rechristened Mr. Smith, was allotted the role of secretary.
"Mr. Smith!" the vicomte grumbled. "Was that the best you could think of? Where's your imagination?"
"Monsieur the Vicomte will pardon me." Gracchus retorted with dignity, "but Smith is the only English name I know, apart from Pitt and Nelson."
"I've had a narrow escape, then. Well, Mr. Smith, so be it. And now I think it's time we were making a move."
Dawn was already breaking in the glorious reds and purples of a blustery sunrise. From somewhere nearby came the chimes of a Russian orthodox monastery calling its monks to their morning prayers. The copper domes of a church gleamed like fire against a lurid sky suddenly filled with the gliding flight of gulls and the swift, darting black shapes of swallows.
The streets in the upper town were beginning to come to life. Those people who had run down to the harbor were drifting back again, talking noisily about what they had seen. Others, who had not thought it worthwhile to leave their beds, now opened their windows and threw back the shutters to shout their questions from house to house.
At the far end of the street soldiers were taking down the heavy chain that was stretched between the two squat bastions of the Kiev gate to close it for the night. The first of the day's wagons of grain were visible on the other side.
The travelers climbed into the kibitka and settled themselves as comfortably as they could on the mattresses. Gracchus hopped up beside the driver, who had apparently been continuing his interrupted night's sleep because he found that it was necessary to shake him awake before he could take his place beside him on the wooden plank which served as a box.
Having cast a glance inside to assure himself that all was well with his companions, Gracchus addressed himself to the driver and declaimed majestically, and not without some consciousness of the effect he was producing: "Fperiod! Forward!"
The man chuckled to himself, but he touched up his horses and the huge wagon lumbered away lurching over the ruts, for such things as cobblestones were still unknown to the new town, and drew up to the gate.
Marianne slid her hand into Jason's and, leaning back against the side of the wagon, composed herself for sleep.
Not many moments later, the kibitka had left Odessa behind it and was beginning the long journey across the vast extent of Russia.