'I had not thought you unintelligent?'
'I hope not, Sire. But it would seem that Your Majesty's policies are somewhat too involved for a woman's brain to grasp. And I am not ashamed to admit that I have been able to make nothing of what your judges and your press have been referring to as the "Beaufort affair"… unless it is that an innocent man has suffered unjustly and faced death a dozen times merely to give one of your agents the pleasure and the glory of helping him to escape at last, with your blessing and under the supervision of your imperial navy… and I myself have nearly died of grief! And now, to crown all, you have me brought here by force…'
'Oh ho! Such force!'
'Very well. Against my will, if you prefer. But why?'
Napoleon roused himself from his thoughtful pose and, turning to Marianne, said gravely:
'So that justice may be done, Marianne, and seen to be done by you.'
'Justice?'
'Yes, justice. I have always known that Jason Beaufort was in no way guilty, either of the murder of Nicolas Mallerousse or of anything else. The worst he had done was to take some champagne and burgundy out of France for the delectation of a set of persons whose enjoyment gives me personally no great pleasure. But I had to lay hands on the malefactors – the real malefactors, that is, without destroying the delicate balance of my foreign policies. And in order to achieve that, it was necessary to play the game out to the end.'
'And to risk to the end the possibility that Jason Beaufort might die of his sufferings or the inhuman treatment of your prison guards.'
'I saw to it that he had a guardian angel, and by God! he seems to have done his work well! I had to catch the criminals, I tell you… and then there was that matter of the forged English money which forced me to act or else become a laughing-stock, and incidentally reveal too much about the workings of my own secret service.'
By now, curiosity was to some extent overcoming Marianne's first resentment:
'You say, Your Majesty, that it was necessary for you to catch the criminals? May I ask if you have them now?'
Napoleon merely nodded, but Marianne persisted:
'Your Majesty knows who killed Nicolas Mallerousse, who is the coiner?'
'I know who killed Nicolas Mallerousse and I have him fast, as for the coining…'
He paused and glanced at Marianne's strained face as though undecided. Thinking it advisable to give him some encouragement, she said: 'Was it not the same man?'
'No. The coiner was… myself.'
Marianne could not have been more thoroughly stunned had the ancient ceiling fallen on her head. She stared at the Emperor as if she had begun to doubt his sanity!
'You, Sire?'
'I. My idea was to strike a blow at English commerce by producing, in the strictest secrecy, a large amount of English currency and flooding the market with it. I have no idea how the villains who stowed them on Jason Beaufort's vessel managed to get hold of them, but one thing is certain: they were mine… though I could equally certainly not proclaim the fact. That is why I allowed suspicion to remain on your friend, while in and out of prisons everywhere in France my agents were working in the dark to unravel the truth. It was for the same reason that I had his reprieve made out in advance and laid the best plans I could for his escape. That could not fail. Vidocq is a clever man… and I had no doubt that you would give him a hand.'
'Truly, Sire, we are small things in your hands. I begin to wonder whether a man of genius is a blessing of the gods – or a calamity! But, Sire' – she went on, a note of anxiety in her voice, 'this criminal – or criminals?'
'You are right to say criminals, for there are a number of them, but they have a leader, and this leader – but no – come with me.'
'Whereto?'
To the keep. I have something to show you. But wrap yourself warmly.'
He stooped to pick up Marianne's gloves which she had dropped on the hearth and himself settled the hood once more over her head, his hands reverting instinctively to the old, caressing gestures with which, during those enchanted days they had spent together at the Trianon, he had been used to put on her cloak for her and drape the scarf about her hair. Just as he had done then, he took her arm and led her outside, signing to Rustan to follow as he passed.
Out in the open, the icy wind whirled about them but, leaning close together, they plunged across the vast courtyard, up to their ankles in the snow which crunched beneath their feet. They came to the barbican before the keep and Napoleon made her go before him through the low archway, guarded by two sentries so rigid they might have been frozen stiff. Even their moustaches had icicles on them. On the far side, Napoleon held her back suddenly. In the light of the lantern which hung by an iron bracket from the wall, his blue-grey eyes were very grave, even stern, but there was no hardness in them.
'What you are going to see will be very horrible, Marianne… and altogether exceptional. But, let me say it again, justice must be done. Are you ready to look at what I would show you?'
She met his eyes unflinchingly:
'I am ready.'
He took her hand and drew her forward. They passed through another low arch and found themselves at the foot of the keep, standing on a plank bridge spanning the wide, deep moat. There was a wooden staircase going down into the moat and Marianne looked down, automatically, to where some lanterns were moving about below, to draw back almost immediately with a choking gasp of horror. There, in the trampled snow at the foot of the empty moat, with a guard standing on either side of it, was a sinister wooden framework, like a hideous window made of red-painted wood, with a great triangular blade at its upper end. The guillotine.
Marianne stared at the ghastly instrument with eyes dilated with horror. She was trembling so violently that Napoleon pulled her gently within the circle of his arm and held her close.
'It is dreadful, I know. And none can loathe that fearful thing more than I…'
'Then why…'
'Because it is fitting. In a short while, a man is going to die. He is waiting now in a cell inside the keep and no one, apart from those few who will be present at his execution, will ever know that it took place here tonight, just as no one will ever know how he was condemned. But the fact is that this man is a criminal of an altogether exceptional kind, such a wretch as is rarely found. Last summer, he lured Nicolas Mallerousse into a trap and, with the help of his accomplices, had him carried, gagged and bound to the house at Passy where Jason Beaufort was living at that time, and where he thereafter cold-bloodedly cut his throat. But this killing was only one of his many crimes. Some dozens of my own troops, held captive on the English hulks, have died, torn to pieces by the hounds which this man trained to track them down…'
Marianne had known, ever since Napoleon had told her that he held the criminal, that this was what she would hear. For her own part, she had known for so long that it was he who had killed Nicolas. Yet even now, she found it hard to believe that a man of his diabolical cunning could have allowed himself to be caught. Napoleon's last words, however, had thrown a blinding light even on this.
One doubt, stronger than all reason, Marianne had stilclass="underline"
'Sire! Are you sure that this time there is no mistake?'
He stiffened, embracing her in a glance that was suddenly ice-cold:
'You do not mean to ask me to pardon him, now?'
'God forbid, Sire!… if it is he, indeed!'