Жюльетта Бенцони: Marianne and the Privateer

From the steps, Marianne saw a piece of burning timber crash down on old Prince Kurakin. The massive, gouty Russian ambassador collapsed with a grunt like a wounded bear, but a man in the tattered uniform of a French general sprang forward instantly to rescue him.

Leaning her bare back gratefully against the cold stone of one of the statues, Marianne stared, wide-eyed with horror, at the spectacle of desolation and death which, all round her in the gardens, had replaced the magical beauty of so short a time before. She was still gasping for breath and her chest hurt her, and her shoulder where the skin was blistered and cracked from her burns. Even here, the air was almost too thick to breathe. The ballroom was now a blazing inferno, shooting roaring flames up into the dark sky, as if in search of something more to feed on. Vague shapes could still be seen emerging from the furnace within, their garments blazing, and rolling themselves screaming on the ground in their efforts to put out the stinging flames.

The injured and dying were everywhere. People were rushing hither and thither in panic, not knowing what they were doing. Marianne saw Prince Metternich run towards the flames, a bucket of water in his hands. She saw another man, also running, carrying a woman in a silver dress and she recognized Jason, oblivious of everything but the need to bear his wife, Pilar, safely out of danger.

I no longer exist for him, Marianne thought bewilderedly. He is thinking only of her. He has not tried to find out if I am even alive…

She felt suddenly very weak, and very much alone. Among all these people, there was not one who was her friend, not one whose thoughts were only for her. She felt so desolate that she put her arms round the statue, a little figure of Ceres in white marble, and started to cry bitterly, clinging to the stone which was already growing warm from the fire.

'Antonia! Antonia!'

The piercing shriek close beside her roused Marianne from her agony of self-pity. Looking up, she saw a woman clearly far advanced in pregnancy running desperately towards the blaze. Her tangled hair fell about her shoulders, over the shreds of a white muslin gown, and her arms were stretched out before her. To her horror, Marianne recognized the ambassador's sister-in-law, Princess Schwarzenburg, and darted swiftly in pursuit:

'Madame! Madame!… Where are you going? For pity's sake—'

The eyes the young woman turned on her were so dilated with horror and anguish that it was doubtful if they even saw her.

'My daughter!' she said. 'Antonia! She is in there!'

With a sudden movement, she wrenched herself free from Marianne's grasp, leaving her holding nothing but a few strips of tattered muslin, and resumed her blind race. Still shrieking and calling, she had reached the fire when, with a mighty crash, the floor of the ballroom collapsed into the empty pool above which it was built and Marianne saw the wretched woman vanish into the fiery pit below.

Sick with horror, her stomach heaving, Marianne could only double up and vomit. Her head was hammering and she was sweating heavily. When she lifted her eyes it was to see with disgust that the musicians, who had escaped with the rest into the gardens, were busy among the injured, robbing them of their jewels. And they, unhappily, were not the only ones. The people who had swarmed up on to the walls of the embassy garden to watch the fireworks with shouts of delight, had come in for their share of the spoils. Groups of ill-favoured rascals were slipping over the walls into the gardens, eyes gleaming like a pack of hungry wolves, and were going silently about their grisly work.

The efforts of the embassy staff to keep the evil tide at bay were worse than useless. A few men attempted to defend the women victims, but they were too few to offer any effective resistance.

But, Marianne thought, with mounting horror, the firemen should be here, soldiers… Where is the Emperor's escort?

But the Emperor had gone and his escort with him. How long would it be before a regiment of troops could be brought in to restore order and drive off the looters? A hand fell on her suddenly, snatching the tiara from her head, and a handful of hair with it, then tugging at the emerald necklace, trying to break the clasp. Marianne screamed in terror:

'Help! Thieves!'

A second hand, rough and evil-smelling, stopped her mouth. Instinctively, she struggled with her attacker, seeing a long, pallid face and cruel eyes, a man dressed in dirty overalls, reeking of sweat. Biting and scratching, she managed to wriggle from his grasp and started to run, her hands gripping her necklace, but he was before her, hurling himself forward to jerk her back. She felt a steel blade pricking her throat.

'Give me those!' said a hoarse voice, 'or I'll cut yer throat!'

He pressed lightly, so that the blade nicked the soft flesh. Petrified with fear, Marianne put up trembling hands to unfasten the necklace and saw the man slip it into his sleeve. Then she took the sparkling drops from her ears. The knife was removed and Marianne thought that now he would let her go, but he did not. Instead, he bent over her, chuckling evilly. She felt his breath on her face, foul with the reek of cheap wine, and gave a choking scream; but moist, cold lips were clamped hard on hers, stifling the cry with a kiss that made her retch. At the same time, the man holding her was thrusting her roughly in the direction of a bed of huge peonies guarding the entrance to a shrubbery.

'This way, my beauty! It's not every day I gets me 'ands on a swell mort like you!'

Marianne was no sooner released from the stinking embrace than she began to scream and struggle again, thin, piercing screams uttered on a high note of hysteria. Failing to muffle them, the man drew back his arm and struck her with such force that she fell to the ground. But even as he bent to drag her in among the bushes, a man's figure sprang from the shadows and grappled with him, flinging him down a yard or two from Marianne. The ruddy glow of the fire enabled her to recognize Chernychev. He was bleeding from a cut across his temple and his uniform was badly charred, but he seemed otherwise unhurt.

'Run!' he snarled. 'By St Vladimir, I mean to gut this moujik like a herring!'

He did not look at Marianne. In the unnatural, flickering half-light, she could see his green eyes shining with savage joy at the prospect of a fight. He stood with his hands held low and open, ready to grip, his body tense and perfectly controlled, unarmed and wholly forgetful of his recently-healed wound, confronting the villain with the butcher's knife.

'He stole my jewels,' Marianne whispered, holding her hand to her bruised throat and feeling the raw wound on her neck where the necklace had bitten into it as the man pulled.

'That is all? He did not rape you?'

'He had no time, he—'

'Get yourself to safety. I will recover your jewels. As for this gallows-bird, he may thank Our Lady of Kazan he was not born in Russia! There he would have died under the knout for daring to so much as touch you.'

The man gave a crack of laughter and spat out some vile oath, settling the knife more comfortably in his grimy paw.

'But he is armed!' Marianne wailed. 'He will kill you.'

Now it was the Cossack's turn to laugh, his slanting eyes narrowed to gleaming slits as he surveyed his adversary:

'He? His knife will not save him. I have slain bears and tamed wild horses with these bare hands. I shall have throttled him in two minutes, knife or no!'

Then, with a powerful thrust of steely muscles, Chernychev sprang. Caught off-balance, the other man fell heavily, with a choking gasp, striving to tear away the hands that clutched ferociously at his throat, half-throttling him before he could use his weapon. The knife had fallen from his hand and Marianne bent quickly to seize it, but the man was strong for all his gaunt frame and already he had wrenched his neck free and was making a recovery. Both men rolled over and over on the ground, as closely intertwined as a pair of fighting snakes engaged in a savage struggle on the damp grass of a smoothly-shaven lawn.