The Marquis of Bolibar (12 page)

"What else can you do?" said Donop. "You have your orders from the colonel, and no amount of cursing and swearing will change them."

"Well, I won't go, not in a month of Sundays! A thunderbolt can bury me ten thousand fathoms deep before I quit the field in favour of the rest of you!"

I nudged him in the ribs, for Monjita, accompanied at the pianoforte by Eglofstein, had just begun to sing.

The very first notes transfixed me with melancholy, for I had often heard Françoise-Marie sing the same aria. Like Monjita, she would stand there with her dainty head bowed and a wealth of red-gold hair cascading over her rounded, girlish shoulders, surreptitiously smiling across at me, and I would thrill to the blissful recollection that it was only yesterday I held that trembling body in my exultant hands, and only yesterday that I had rapturously smothered that melodious mouth with kisses. And a sudden thought entered my head and filled it to the exclusion of all else. No, I told myself, it cannot be otherwise: when I take my leave of Monjita, bending low over her hand, she will secretly whisper to me, as Françoise-Marie was wont to do, "Till tonight, beloved!"

All at once Monjita broke off in the middle of a phrase and gave the colonel an imploring glance. He went over to her and tenderly stroked her russet hair.

"This is the first time she has sung it for company," he told us, "and only the beginning has lodged in that little head of hers."

"Monjita has a fine voice," the priest said, venturing out of his corner. "She has sung in our church on feast days, together with a licentiate whom the Señor Marques de Bolibar employed for a while in his library. He now holds a good curate's post in Madrid."

"That name again!" exclaimed the colonel. "One hears no other in your town all day long. Where is this Marquis of Bolibar? Where is he skulking? Why cannot I see him face to face? I have good reason to seek his acquaintance."

It would have been wiser to remain silent, but my secret was giving me no peace.

"Colonel," I said, "the Marquis of Bolibar is dead."

Eglofstein frowned and got up from the pianoforte.

"Jochberg," he said in an irritable tone, "do you truly mean to weary us yet again with your foolish fairy-tale?"

"It is as I say: on Christmas Eve, when I was commanding the gate guard, I had the Marquis of Bolibar shot by my men."

Eglofstein shrugged. "A figment of his overheated imagination," he said, turning to the colonel. "The Marquis of Bolibar is alive and will, I fear, give us a deal of trouble yet."

"Well," said the colonel, "be he alive or dead, we know his plans and have taken all steps necessary to prevent them from being put into effect."

"And I tell you, and I stand by what I say," I cried, stung by Eglofstein's mocking and supercilious manner, "that the man is dead and buried. We're battling with a ghost, a bugaboo, a chimera."

Just then the door burst open and Salignac entered, his face even paler than the bandage around his head. He stood there sabre in hand, all breathless from running up the stairs, and his eyes sought the colonel's.

"Colonel," he panted, "was the signal given on your orders?"

"The signal?" exclaimed the colonel. "What do you mean, Salignac? I gave no order."

"Clouds of smoke are rising above this house! There's straw smouldering on the roof!"

Eglofstein squared his shoulders, white to the lips.

"This is his doing. We have the man at last."

"What man?" I exclaimed.

"The Marquis of Bolibar," he replied, leaden-tongued.

"The Marquis of Bolibar?" Salignac cried in an extremity of agitation. "Then he must be in the house. No one has left by the door!"

He rushed out, and we heard a slamming of doors and a thunder of footsteps as his dragoons charged wildly through the house, searching every room, passage and stairway.

Günther's voice broke the spell. "Colonel," he said, "is it not time you gave me those letters for General d'Hilliers?" He was lolling against the wall with his hands behind his back, smiling, and it occurred to me that I had not seen him in the room for some minutes.

"Too late," the colonel said darkly. "Another hour, and the town will be encircled by guerrillas. You would never get through their lines. The convoy is lost."

"So the child is still-born," drawled Günther, and his eyes shone with the malign exultation of a Judas Iscariot. "Many thanks for the offer of your Polish horse, Jochberg. I shall not be needing it now."

"And the worst of it is," Eglofstein said gloomily, "we have no more than ten rounds per man. Do you still maintain that the Marquis of Bolibar is dead, Jochberg?"

I alone heard the muttered response that came from where Günther was standing: "Trounced!"

WITH SAUL TO ENDOR

On Tuesday morning I left the town to take up my duties in the Sanroque outwork, for we had begun to strengthen the ramparts and entrenchments, and two semicircular outworks with counterscarps and wide ditches were already half completed. The lines were jointly manned that day by Brockendorf's company and a half-battalion of the Prince of Hesse's Own, which had been sent to reinforce us not long before. My dragoons, whose turn it was to do duty in the town itself, were patrolling the streets.

While passing the presbytery I came upon Thiele, my corporal, seated on the ground with a battered camp kettle between his knees, whistling "Our Cousin Mathies", a marching song, as he hammered out the dents with a mallet.

"Lieutenant," he hailed me from across the street, "hell has sprung a leak since yesterday, and demons by the bushel are roaming abroad."

It was the guerrillas of whom he spoke. Fearing to lose my way unaided in the maze of entrenchments that lay between the walls and the Sanroque outwork, I bade him accompany me. He shouldered his mallet and fell into step beside me, swinging the camp kettle.

The appearance of the town had altogether changed overnight. Despite the fine winter weather, the marketplace was deserted and the streets were devoid of the many water-carriers, fish- and vegetable-sellers, muleteers and beggars who ordinarily went about their clamorous business at this hour. Apart from a few old crones who flitted across the street from doorway to doorway, hurriedly and with anxious faces, the townsfolk were hidden away indoors.

Yet there was life and noise enough. Dispatch riders galloped unceasingly to and fro between the outworks and the colonel's headquarters, rumbling powder waggons overtook us, and mules laden with provisions and entrenching materials filed past. The Hessians' surgeon had installed himself in a hollow beyond the town gate and was leaning against an ambulance waggon, smoking his pipe and awaiting the first of the wounded.

"The night pickets have already had a brush with the enemy," Thiele told me as we went our way. "They sent back three prisoners with their report. All three looked as if they were newly landed from Noah's Ark. How comes it that all these guerrillas have the faces of monkeys, mules or goats?"

After thinking awhile, he himself supplied an explanation for this singular phenomenon.

"Most likely," he said, "it comes of their partiality for eating corn cobs and acorn mash, victuals such as we feed to our beasts at home. They're quiet now, but an hour ago you could have heard them wailing piteously. They stood in a circle round their officers and chanted their morning prayer. It sounded like a hymn to Behemoth, the demonic patron of blasphemy and cattle fodder."

He spat contemptuously on the ground. By now we had reached the Mon Cœur lunette, which was enclosed by a palisade. The Hessian grenadiers lay stretched out in the trench on their kitbags and knapsacks. The officers on duty, Captain Count Schenk zu Castel-Borckenstein and Lieutenant von Dubitsch, two figures in pale blue tunics with tiger-skin revers, were conversing at the mouth of the lunette. The hauteur with which they returned my formal salute stemmed from the longstanding enmity between their regiment and ours, its origin being a parade in Valladolid at which the Emperor had omitted to bestow so much as a glance on the Prince of Hesse's Own.

We traversed the redoubt and, by way of the Estrella curtain, reached the first outwork, where I sent Corporal Thiele back. I found Brockendorf's men hard at it, for this part of the fortifications was barely half finished. Some of the men were revetting the walls with gabions and fascines, others improving the embrasures in the parapet, and others at work on the penthouse roof. Donop, spade in hand, was supervising the laying of a mine to be set off in the event that the colonel should order this part of the defences to be demolished. His breakfast of bread and a bottle of wine lay beside him on the ground, together with a treatise by Polybius on the art of warfare in the ancient world.

"Jochberg," he called, resting his spade against the wall, "you can go home again. Günther has taken over your duties today."

"Günther on duty in my place?" I said, surprised. "That's the first I've heard of it."

"He volunteered," said Donop. "What's more, you owe your day of leisure to Monjita."

Laughingly and a trifle maliciously, he recounted the lamentable outcome of Günther's visit to Monjita. It seemed that he had called on our colonel's lovely mistress punctually after Mass the previous day. He apologized for bringing her no flowers. Had it not been winter, he said, he would have presented her with a bouquet made up of roses for ardent love, of blue forget-me-nots for true remembrance, of delphiniums, the flowers of St George, and of tulips and violets, whose romantic significance I forget.

He had then declared his love and assured her how heartfelt it was, and Monjita sent for iced water and chocolate and heard him out with a smile, for Günther's polished phrases seemed to please her. She asked him if he had ever been to Madrid and if what her father said was true, namely, that all the people one saw in that city's streets were either English cobblers or French barbers.

Rather than pursue the subject of Madrid, Günther began to speak of the colonel, whose dearest wish, he said, was to father a son and heir. If he got one, he would assuredly make Monjita his wife.

Monjita's eyes lit up at these words. She proceeded to question Günther about the colonel's late wife and asked if he had known her. He must tell her all about the dead woman, she insisted, for she wished to become like her in every respect but had much to learn.

"One learns so little from our Spanish books," she said with a sigh. "When a king was born and when he was baptized, which princess he married and who arranged the match - things of that sort, nothing more ..."

Günther reverted to the colonel's desire for a son. Then, his conversation with Monjita having already taken so intimate a turn, he went a step further. If only she would avail herself of his services, he said, he himself could readily assist her in this matter.

Monjita looked puzzled, for his meaning had at first escaped her, so Günther repeated his proposal in plain language.

At this she rose without a word, turned her back on him, and went to the window. Günther, who assumed her to be thinking the matter over, waited patiently for a while. At length, however, he rose and, hoping to further his cause, kissed the nape of her neck.

She swung round and glared at him with flashing eyes. Then she swept past him and out of the door.

Günther, all the more piqued and disappointed for having felt so confident of success, lingered alone in the room for an hour or thereabouts. At last, when the hour was up, Monjita reappeared.

"What, still here?" she said, her anger unabated.

"I was waiting for you."

"I have no wish to see you any more. Go!"

"I shall not go until you have forgiven me."

"Very well, I forgive you, but now go quickly. The colonel has returned."

"Then give me a kiss in token of your forgiveness."

"You must be mad. Kindly go!"

"Not until —" Günther began.

"For the love of Christ, go!" Monjita whispered urgently, but just then the door opened and the colonel appeared on the threshold. He stared in surprise, first at Günther and then at Monjita, who was standing by the door, pale and distraught.

"You wished to see me, Lieutenant Günther?" he said.

"I wished," stammered Günther, "— that is to say, I came to report before taking up my duties."

"Did you not find Eglofstein in his office? What post have you been assigned?"

"The Sanroque outwork," Günther said swiftly.

"Very good," said the colonel. "Be careful of the guerrillas."

Günther hurried from the room and stormed downstairs. In the street he met Donop and, still seething with fury like a saucepan on the hob, told him of his unsuccess.

"And that," Donop said in conclusion, "is how you came to be relieved of your duties and why Günther must perform them in your place. You owe it to Monjita, with whom I hope to have better luck than Günther, whose glib demeanour so ill conceals the clumsy oaf beneath."

Günther had yet to appear, but Eglofstein was standing behind the breastwork with Brockendorf in attendance and his glass trained on the guerrillas, large numbers of whom were swarming about near the village of Figueras and on the farther bank of the river Douro. Their long grey cloaks were visible to the naked eye, and one could even, through the telescope, discern the red cockades in their caps.

"They possess all manner of artillery," said Eglofstein, lowering the glass. "Twenty-four-pounders, for example, and there's a ricochet battery to the right of that church in Figueras. However, I hope they'll give us time enough to complete our work on the fortifications."

"Guerrillas' artillery!" growled Brockendorf. "Does it scare you? I know those cannon — they're carved in wood and mounted on ploughshares instead of gun-carriages."

Eglofstein shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, but Brockendorf fell to cursing.

"Devil take the colonel! Does he intend yet another interminable delay before he gives the order to attack? Grenades and grapeshot, comrades! I've blithely endured all the trials and tribulations of battle, but this endless waiting drives me mad."