As she left the prison, she thanked the keeper warmly and slid into his hand a number of gold coins which brought the blood rushing into his cheeks. Then, slipping back into her part of the country girl elated by a good supper and a drop of wine, she hung on Crawfurd's arm as they set out on the short walk to the church of St Paul where the Scotsman had told the cab driver to wait for them, rather than attract attention by lingering outside the prison. The sentry called out a jovial good night to them as they moved slowly away, walking carefully to avoid tripping on the uneven cobbles.
'You're happy, I can tell,' Crawfurd said softly as they turned into the rue St-Antoine. 'Am I right?'
'Yes. It's quite true, I am happy. Not that Jason gave me much encouragement to hope. He expects to be found guilty and, worst of all, he seems to be resigned to it, because the good of his country demands it.'
'That does not surprise me. These Americans are like their own splendid country: simple and big. Pray God they may never change! All the same, he may be resigned, but that is no reason for us all to be so – eh? As our friend Talleyrand would say.'
'I agree. But I wanted to tell you—'
However, Quintin Crawfurd was not destined to hear what Marianne wanted to tell him of her gratitude, because as they approached the little group of elm trees in the miniature square in front of the old Jesuit church, the Scotsman suddenly pressed the arm which lay within his.
'Sssh!' he said… There is something there…'
A light wind had got up, sending the heavy rain clouds scudding across the sky, veiling the moon so that it shone through only as a pale, diffused glow. Against this faint lightening of the darkness, the trees in front of them seemed to have taken on strange, moving shapes, as if men in billowing cloaks might be concealed behind them. The square shape of the cab was clearly to be seen near the church but the driver was not on the box. A whinny made Marianne glance to her right and she made out several horses standing in a side alley. It needed no words, nor the movement made by Crawfurd drawing the hidden pistol very slowly from the inner pocket of his cloak, to make Marianne suspect a trap, but she had no time to wonder any more.
There was a sudden movement, as if the trees had come to life, and in a twinkling the two on foot found themselves the centre of a menacing circle of black, silent shapes of men dressed in full capes and broad-brimmed hats. Crawfurd presented his pistoclass="underline"
'What do you want? If you mean to rob us, we have no money onus.'
'Put up your weapon, Señor,' said one of the shadowy figures, speaking in a strong Spanish accent. 'We have more powerful ones trained on you. It is not gold that we are after.'
'Then what do you want?'
But the Spaniard, whose face was invisible beneath his wide hat, disregarded the question, and at a sign from him the Scotsman found himself expertly gagged and bound. Then the man turned to the figure at his side:
'That is the one?'
The person addressed, who was much shorter and slighter than the first speaker, moved a step or two closer and, taking a dark lantern from beneath the enveloping cloak, opened the shutter and held it up so that the light shone on Marianne's face. At the same time, the light fell on the cloaked figure and revealed it to be a woman. It was Pilar.
'It is she!' she proclaimed on a note of triumph. 'Thank you, my good Vasquez, for all the time you have spent watching here. I knew that, sooner or later, she would come to the prison.'
'Do you mean to tell me,' Marianne said scornfully, 'that this man has been watching the prison for all these weeks purely on the chance of procuring for you this delightful encounter?'
'Precisely. For more than a month we have waited. Ever since, in fact, we heard that Prince Talleyrand had returned from Bourbon l'Archambault… and that the Princess Sant'Anna was too ill to leave her room. Don Alonso took a lodging in the rue des Ballets and kept watch. We knew that you were not in the prince's house, nor your own. You had to be somewhere, and watching the prison was the one way to find out.'
'I congratulate you,' Marianne said. 'I had not known that you were so intelligent… or so talkative. And now what do you mean to do with us? Kill us?'
Pilar's pale face was thrust close to hers. Hatred gleamed in the black eyes but Marianne stared back coolly into the beautiful features, their purity already ravaged by bitterness and despair. If ever she had seen her death written in a human face it was here, but in the strength of her newly consummated love she felt no fear. Besides, Pilar was speaking:
'That would be too easy! No, we are merely going to take you with us and take good care of you, in case you should do anything foolish. We cannot have any ill-considered action of yours interfering with the course of justice. I had thought at first to hand you over to the police, but it seems that your Napoleon has a fondness for you.'
'If I were you, I would not forget that fondness. He does not take kindly to having his friends kidnapped!'
'He will not know. After all – you are still in exile, are you not? You had better silence the lady, gentlemen, she seems to be about to scream.'
This was true. But before Marianne could do more than open her mouth to alert the people in the nearby houses, she found herself firmly gagged, then bound and bundled into the cab to join Crawfurd. One of the cloaked men jumped on to the box but Pilar and Vasquez got in with their prisoners. Seated, facing her enemy, Pilar frowned:
'Better bandage their eyes as well, my friend. I don't want them to know where they are taken.'
This the Spaniard did and Marianne, robbed of both sight and speech, could only sit and think her own thoughts, which seemed suddenly to have become rather less optimistic. Things had ceased, in fact, to be as simple as she had been inclined to think. Ever since leaving Jason she had been buoying herself up with the comforting illusion that she was going to snatch her lover from death and set him free, a freedom which she naturally intended that he should share with her. Failing this, she had been determined to die with him, or at least at the same time, so that they might embark together, hand in hand, on an eternity of love. She had even got to the point of imagining the letter she would leave for Jolival, so that he might unite both their bodies in a single grave, and, rather like a spoiled child saying 'I'll die and then they'll be sorry', she had even derived a certain satisfaction from the thought of Napoleon's grief and remorse when he should learn that by his harshness he had driven his nightingale to her death. In all of which, she found herself obliged to confess bitterly, she had quite forgotten the disagreeable fact of Pilar…