Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne and the Crown of Fire

The generous impulse which had prompted the young man's action had cooled somewhat during the discussion and he approached Marianne with a faintly shamefaced air.

'The priest says that she is now my wife! Her name is Shankala,' he muttered, sounding so downcast that Marianne smiled at him comfortingly.

'Why are you looking so miserable, Gracchus? You could not have stood by and seen the poor creature murdered,' she said gently. 'You acted splendidly and for my part I am proud of you.'

'And so am I! From a humanitarian point of view, at any rate,' Jolival agreed. 'But I am wondering what we are going to do with her?'

'I can't see that the question arises,' the Irishman said cheerfully. 'The woman should go with her husband and since this wild cat is now Madame Gracchus…'

'Oh, as to that, I didn't take the holy man too seriously.' The bridegroom broke in with an air of would-be carelessness. 'I'm not really married, of course. Besides, I'm for liberty. I don't go much for priests and if you want the truth I've more faith in the Goddess of Reason than in God the Father. Not that she wasn't a handsome wench—'

'Well, Gracchus,' Marianne exclaimed in amazement; 'this is certainly a profession of faith! I've always known you for a child of the Revolution but I wonder what the cardinal would say if he could hear you?'

Gracchus hung his head and fidgeted a little.

'Forgive me, Mademoiselle Marianne. I said more than I meant. This business has me in a proper whirl. But after all, surely the girl could always make a maid for you. She'd never be as good as Agathe, of course, but still better than nothing.'

Jason, so far, had said nothing. He was gazing at the rescued woman with a curious expression, as though she were some strange animal. At last he gave a shrug.

'A ladies' maid? That girl? You don't know what you're saying, Gracchus. It seems to me that she'll be more trouble to tame than a she-wolf. Nor do I think she will show us much gratitude for saving her.'

Marianne was inclined to agree with him. Even in her present wretched state, with her torn shift and her bruises and covered in dust, the gipsy girl was not an object for pity. Her black eyes gleamed under their heavy brows with a savage fire that was more than a little disturbing. Seen from close to, she was in fact quite beautiful, in spite of a rather flattened nose and high cheekbones. Her rather slanting eyes betrayed traces of mongol blood. Her skin was smooth and her hair a deep blue-black, but the wide mouth with its full, red lips betrayed a latent sensuality.

She stared insolently from one to another of her rescuers and when Marianne smiled kindly at her and held out her hand, she pretended not to see it and turned away quickly to snatch away the bundle wrapped in red cloth which her mother-in-law had tossed at the driver out of her doorway and which probably contained the girl's belongings.

Craig laughed softly. 'Well now, to be sure, it's a pleasant journey we'll be having with this colleen—'

'Bah!' Jolival said. 'I'll be surprised if she stays with us long. She'll be off at the first opportunity as soon as she's put sufficient distance between herself and her friends in the village here. You heard what Gracchus said? She's a gipsy, a born traveller.'

'Oh, let her do as she likes,' Marianne said with a sigh, nettled by the girl's contemptuous attitude. 'Gracchus is the only one of us who can talk to her. Let him try what he can do.'

She had had more than enough of the business and if she was not precisely sorry they had saved the gipsy girl from drowning, she certainly wanted to put her out of her mind as far as possible. After all, Gracchus was a grown man and old enough to be responsible.

She turned her steps towards the doorway of the inn where the familiar figure of the postmaster stood cap in hand to greet them. Jason followed her but when Gracchus took Shankala by the arm to lead her inside she twisted out of his grasp like a snake and, running after Jason, took his hand and pressed it to her lips with fierce intensity. As she released it she spoke some words in a low, guttural voice.

'What does she say?' Marianne cried with rising irritation.

Gracchus had turned scarlet to the roots of his carroty hair and his blue eyes flashed.

'She says that – that if she must have a master she will choose him for herself. The hussy! I've a good mind to call back her husband and hand her over to the women again.'

'It's too late now,' Jolival said.

Indeed, the cossacks, after a final blessing from their priest, were already beginning to cross the river. Heedless of wetting themselves, they rode into the water at a place known to them which must have been a ford because the horses, guided by their sure hands, were never more than breast deep in the stream. The leaders were already mounting the farther bank. The rest followed in their turn and before very long they were all forming up again in perfect order on the other side. Two by two, the black-clad riders vanished into the gathering darkness.

That night, in the little boarded room beneath the icon of the Virgin and Child, both of them sporting the most atrocious squints, Marianne failed to recover the perfect happiness of earlier nights. She was nervous and irritable and unable to respond wholeheartedly to her lover's caresses. Her mind still dwelled on the woman who was sleeping somewhere beneath their common roof. In vain she told herself that she was little more than a wild animal, a creature of no importance who could never affect her own life; still she could not rid herself of the notion that the gipsy was a danger, a threat that was the more formidable because she could not tell what form it would take.

Tired of clasping an unresponsive body and of kissing lips that did not take fire from his, Jason got up suddenly and, fetching the candle that burned before the icon, brought it close to Marianne's face. In the light her eyes were wide open and shining, with no hint of amorous softness in them.

'What is it?' he murmured, laying a finger softly on her lips. "You look as if you'd seen a ghost. Don't you feel like making love tonight?'

She did not move her head but her eyes, as they looked at him, were full of sadness.

'I'm frightened,' she said.

'Frightened? What of? Are you afraid those village harpies will come and sit down outside our windows to get Shankala back?'

'No. I think it is Shankala I am afraid of.'

Jason laughed. 'What an idea! She's no very friendly look about her, I'll agree, but then she doesn't know us and from what we've seen she's had no cause so far to love the human race. Those old witches would have torn her to pieces if they could. Her beauty can't have helped her there.'

Marianne was conscious of a nasty little tug somewhere in the region of her heart. She did not at all like to hear Jason speak of the woman's beauty.

'Have you forgotten she deceived her husband? She's an adulteress—'

The sudden harshness that came into her voice made her feel as if the words had been a scream. Or perhaps it was the silence that followed them. For a moment Jason studied the sharpened lines of his beloved's face. Then he blew out the candle and drew her hard against him, holding her so close that it was as if he would have crept inside her very skin. He kissed her, a long kiss that sought to warm her cold lips and instil into them something of his own passion, but in vain. His lips moved to her cheek, then nibbled at her ear before he whispered at last: 'But you, too, are an adulteress, my love. Yet no one has suggested drowning you…'

Marianne leapt as if a serpent had stung her and struggled to draw away but he held her firmly and, the better to immobilize her, imprisoned both her legs between his hard thighs, while she cried out: 'You are mad! I, an adulteress? Don't you know that I am free? That my husband is dead?'