In a few words, Arcadius and Marianne told him all that had happened since she had last seen him: Jason's injury, the impossibility of his being in any condition to attempt an escape before another week was out, and the threat which hung over him as soon as he was in a way to be better which left them so small a margin of time in which to get him out. To all this, Jean Ledru listened, frowning and chewing the ends of his moustache with increasing discontent. When Marianne came to the end of her conversation with Vidocq that morning, he slammed his fist down on the table with such violence that the fish leaped on their bed of seaweed and rushes.
'You are forgetting one thing – one rather important thing. The sea. You can't treat that with impunity. The weather in a week's time will have made the Iroise impassable. Your prisoner must be aboard the vessel coming to pick him up at Le Conquet in five days at the latest.'
'What vessel is this?'
'Never you mind. The one that's to take him across the ocean, of course. It will be off Ushant in three days and it can't lie off the coast for long without the coastguard seeing it. We sail on Christmas Eve.'
Marianne and Jolival stared at each other speechlessly. Had Ledru gone mad, or had he understood not one word of all that they had told him? In the end it was Marianne who spoke first.
'Jean,' she said again, very quietly, 'we told you, a week at least before Jason will be strong enough to climb a rope or scale a wall or do any of the other things he will have to do if he is to escape.'
'I suppose he is strong enough, at least, to saw through the chain fastening him to his bed? You tell me you have managed to get all the tools he needs smuggled in to him, and money to buy himself extra food?'
'Yes, we have done all that,' Jolival said quickly. 'But it is still not enough. What would you do?'
'Carry him off, just like that. I know where the prison hospital is, the end building, almost outside the prison itself. The walls are not so high – easier to climb. I have ten men, all used to going aloft in a full gale. To get into the hospital, get your friend out and over the wall will be child's play. We simply knock out anyone who gets in our way. It'll be all over in a brace of shakes. High tide on Christmas Eve is midnight. We can sail on the turn. The Saint-Guénolé will be moored off Keravel. Besides' – he grinned briefly at the two startled faces before him, 'it'll be Christmas Eve – and the guards have their own way of celebrating. They'll be drunk as lords. We'll have no trouble from them. Any other objections?'
Marianne took a deep breath, as if she had just surfaced after swimming for a long time under water. After all these days of doubt and anxiety, Jean Ledru's quiet confidence left her feeling slightly dashed. But, goodness, what a comfort he was! She smiled.
'I'd hardly dare! You wouldn't listen to them if I had, would you?'
'No, I shouldn't,' he agreed seriously, but his eyes twinkled suddenly as he hoisted the fish basket back on to his shoulder, with the crinkling smile which, in this taciturn Breton, was a sign of extravagant mirth:
'Warn the prisoner it's for Monday night. Let him have his chain cut through by eleven o'clock. The rest is up to me. As for yourselves – watch for the boat and when you see her alongside wait until it's dark and then go aboard.'
With a final wave of his hand, the sailor passed out of the house and through the little garden then, with his basket on his shoulder, he set off with great strides in the direction of the harbour. For a little while, the sound of his whistling came floating back to them up the steep, narrow streets, the same, jaunty little tune which Marianne had heard once before, one anguished morning as she stood watching a tiny sailing boat put slowly out to sea, leaving her the captive of Morvan the Wrecker: it was the song of Surcouf's sailors:
The thirty-first of August,
With the larboard watch below,
We spied an English frigate…
Left alone, standing looking at each other across the table on which Jean had left them a few fish, Marianne and Jolival said nothing for a moment or two. Finally, Arcadius gave a shrug and went to fetch himself a cigar from the blue Delft jar. He sniffed it gently for a moment before bending and taking a light from the fire. A rich, tobacco smell filled the room, overcoming the smell of fish.
'He's right,' he said at last. 'It pays to be bold in matters like this. Anyway, we have no choice.'
'You think he will be able to do it?' Marianne asked anxiously.
'I hope so! If he can't, my dear child, nothing can save us. We shall all be hanged at the yard-arm – unless they decide to shoot us instead. There will be no quarter, you know, if we are caught? Are you afraid?'
'Afraid? The only thing I fear, Jolival, is a life without Jason. I care for nothing else, rope or a shot is all one to me.'
Arcadius drew luxuriously on his cigar and then considered the glowing tip of it intently.
'I always knew you had the makings of a great tragic heroine,' he said equably. 'Or else a great lunatic! For my own part, I've no complaints about staying alive and since we've seven saints in the house, I'll ask them kindly to make sure this exciting Christmas Eve which our ebullient captain promises us may not be our last.'
With that, Arcadius strolled out to finish his cigar in the garden while Marianne, left to herself, started unthinkingly to gut the fish.
December the twenty-fourth began badly. When daylight dawned belatedly, it was to reveal dense, yellow fog, thick enough to cut with a knife. Recouvrance, with its grey stone walls and isolated trees, might have been a lost world drifting in some cloudy infinite. Visibility extended no further than the tower of La Motte Tanguy. Everything else, town, port, castle and roadstead, had vanished as utterly and completely as if the hill had loosed its moorings suddenly and sailed away into the sky, like some enormous air balloon.
Marianne, who had not slept a wink all night long, stared out resentfully at the fog. Fate seemed to be taking a malicious pleasure in making things difficult for her. She was angry with fate, angry with nature, angry with herself for her own fidgets, she was even angry with the world for continuing to turn in its ordinary way while she was in such suspense. She was so nervous and complained so many times that they could never see the Salnt-Guénolé even supposing that she was able to feel her way into the river mouth, that in the end Jolival told Gracchus to go and keep watch from the rocks by the castle point on whatever shipping appeared.
This was at about noon and after that Marianne did make some effort to behave normally for the remainder of the crucial day which was to decide the whole course of her life. Even then, she could not refrain from asking the endlessly patient Jolival a hundred times over if he were quite sure that Jason had been warned to hold himself in readiness and if François Vidocq had also been alerted, as he had requested, so that he could help the American while at the same time seizing a heaven-sent opportunity to escape himself. For Marianne was quite sure that Vidocq was not the man to do anything for nothing.
Madame le Guilvinec, who was spending the festive season with her niece at Portzic, came in during the morning to make sure that her neighbour would want for nothing during her absence and also to bring the traditional yule log which was supposed to be put on the fire to burn slowly up to the time for midnight mass. This one was prettily decorated with red ribbons, golden laurel leaves and sprigs of holly, and Marianne was all the more touched by this mark of friendship because she had been careful to give no hint of her intention to leave Brest that night for the last time and had been inclined to look on the niece's invitation as a stroke of luck.