The Marquis of Bolibar (17 page)

"It must be," cried Donop. "I know her step."

Hurrying to the window, all four of us, we saw Monjita flitting along the street like a moon-cast shadow.

"She's a good girl," Brockendorf murmured, quite affected that Monjita should have kept her word, "damned if she isn't!"

"Come away from the window," Eglofstein commanded in an anxious whisper. "And douse the lights, or the colonel may see us."

We blew out the candles and stood waiting in the gloom. Moonlight slanted down through the lofty windows of stained glass, daubing the flagstones with pallid ornaments and curlicues, rings and circles, while the braziers sprayed the darkness with crepitating sparks. In his room across the way, the colonel paced slowly up and down like a priest composing next Sunday's sermon.

Brockendorf, leaning against the table, could not contain his malicious glee.

"Hey, Vinegar-Jug!" he jeered. "Still awake? Has your beloved kept you waiting tonight?"

"Quiet, quiet!" Eglofstein entreated. "If ill luck decrees that he should hear you ..."

But Brockendorf would as soon have bitten off his tongue as keep his pleasantries to himself.

"Let him hear me and welcome!" he cried. "I'm sorry for the old fool. Tomorrow I'll send him someone in Monjita's place, to wit, the potbellied crone who sweeps the floor of my room each day. Let him console himself with her. She has a body like a whale and a face like a nutshell, but a bundle of gipsy rags is good enough for the likes of him."

All at once the colonel paused and looked toward the door. Brockendorf began to laugh again — immoderately so, because he found it a great joke that we could watch the colonel waiting with such confidence for the mistress we had lured away from him. In lieu of Monjita, he offered to get him all the old women he had ever seen in La Bisbal.

"Heed my advice and go to bed, Vinegar-Jug. You wait in vain - Monjita will not be joining you tonight, but I'll send you the toothless hag that hawks beans and turnips in the street below my window. She would be the proper woman for you — she, or the scraggy old beldam who washes dishes in the tavern kitchen, or . . ."

He fell silent.

The door of the room across the way was slowly and cautiously opened, and the next moment Monjita — young, beautiful, slender, and thirsting for love - flung her arms round the colonel's neck.

None of us spoke a word. The sight of her smote us like a cudgel between the eyes, like a dagger through the heart.

But then it burst forth, the long-suppressed rancour, the chagrin, disappointment and wounded pride that possessed us at the thought that we, not he, had been deceived.

"Coward!" yelled Brockendorf. "Rogue! Poltroon! At Talavera you skulked behind a mule's carcass while we were charging into the grapeshot!"

"Twelve thousand francs of our pay you pocketed, not to mention eight thousand francs for biscuit and salt meat, while we were made to go hungry. The men went into battle without an ounce of bread in their bellies!"

"Had your cousin not been secretary of war to the Prince of Hesse, Marshal Soult would have ripped the epaulettes from your shoulders!"

"How many remounts have you entered in your books twice over, you thief, you skinflint, you brother of Judas?"

We bellowed ourselves hoarse with rage, but the colonel heard nothing. He loosed the silken fillet from Monjita's hair and took her face between his hands.

"He doesn't hear!" cried Brockendorf, almost choking with anger. "But he shall, by God, if I have to rouse all the devils in hell!"

He hammered so fiercely on the window that fragments of glass fell tinkling into the street. Then, leaning far out over the sill and beating time with his clenched fists, he raised his deep bass voice in a raucous rendering of the lampoon against the colonel which a dragoon and a grenadier had composed after the battle of Talavera, and which the soldiers sang when they thought no officer could hear them:

When our colonel goes to battle

and he hears the muskets rattle

and the cannon's voice sonorous

joins the mortar in a chorus,

then you'll see him sweat a river,

pray and blubber, quake and shiver.

Brockendorf paused, breathless and exhausted, but the colonel showed no sign of having heard. He had both arms around Monjita and was holding her close, and we had perforce to look on while she buried her face in his chest with her copper- coloured tresses falling softly over his shoulder.

This spectacle multiplied our hatred a hundredfold and transformed us into demented fools. Blind and deaf to all else, we had but one thought: that the colonel should be made to hear us, and that we must wrest Monjita from his arms.

"Join in, all of you - then he'll hear!" Brockendorf exhorted us, and he launched into the Song of Talavera once more. And we all joined in, bellowing the words into the cold night air with every ounce of strength in our lungs:

When our colonel goes to battle

and he hears the muskets rattle

and the cannon's voice sonorous

joins the mortar in a chorus,

then you'll see him sweat a river,

pray and blubber, quake and shiver.

But when gold o'erflows his pockets

and his purse is stuffed with ducats

that by rights belong to others,

then his pluck he soon recovers!

Suddenly, while we were still singing, Monjita released herself from the colonel's embrace. Going to the Madonna on the wall, she stood on tiptoe and covered its face with her silken fillet as if the Mother of God must not be permitted to see what was about to happen in the room.

At the same moment the colonel blew out the candles. My last sight was of a slender, girlish figure standing before the Holy Virgin - that and the colonel's grotesquely distended cheeks. Then everything vanished: the table, the bed, the two candelabra, the veiled Madonna, the tricorn on the chair — all were engulfed in darkness, yet I seemed to see the shadowy figures of the colonel and his beloved hasten to each other in a transport of desire and become one.

At that, we were overcome with fury. We forgot the town's predicament - forgot that Saracho and his guerrillas were only awaiting the signal to attack. Beside me I heard an oath so blasphemous that my blood ran cold, together with a cry like the howl of a rabid dog. An instant later I saw Brockendorf and Donop racing up the wooden stairway to the organ.

One trod the bellows while the other played. The organ blared forth, and the Song of Talavera filled the chapel from crypt to vaulted ceiling. All four of us joined in — I saw Eglofstein beating time like a madman — and the organ drowned our voices.

But when gold o'erflows his pockets

and his purse is stuffed with ducats

that by rights belong to others,

then his pluck he soon recovers.

Oh you Judas, oh you varlet,

in your helmet plumed with scarlet!

All at once I came to my senses. My face broke out in a cold sweat, my knees trembled, and I asked myself again and again what we had done. And still the organ continued to thunder "Oh you Judas, oh you varlet!"

And I seemed to see Death seated above at the organ with Satan treading the bellows for him, while down below, in the middle of the nave, standing tall and terrible against a shower of incandescent sparks from the braziers, loomed the shade of the Marquis of Bolibar, beating time to our funeral hymn with wild and triumphant gestures.

Then, quite suddenly, all was still. The organ fell silent, and nothing could be heard but the wind whimpering and moaning in the broken window. The four of us stood huddled together, shivering with the cold, and beside me I could hear Brockendorf's hoarse breathing.

"What have we done?" Eglofstein groaned. "What have we done?"

"What possessed us?" gasped Donop. "Brockendorf, it was you that cried, 'Donop, up to the organ!'"

"I? Not a word passed my lips. It was you, Donop, that bade me tread the bellows."

"I did no such thing, as I hope for eternal salvation. What evil spirit drove us to it?"

A window rattled across the street. Hurried footsteps and confused shouts filled the air. In the distance, a drummer beat the alarm.

"Outside!" hissed Eglofstein. "Outside, quickly! No one must find us here."

We fled across the chapel's echoing flagstones, overturned the table as we went, plunged down passages and up flights of steps, tripped over powder kegs, fell headlong, picked ourselves up, ran for our lives.

Just as we reached the street, the first salvo came thundering out of the mountains.

FIRE

I leaned against a wall for a spell, struggling to catch my breath, mortally weary and shivering with cold. Little by little it came to me where I was and what was happening around me.

Hadn't Brockendorf vowed that the colonel should hear us, even if he roused all the devils in hell? Well, the colonel had heard us at last, and by God, all hell had broken loose.

The rebel artillery sent an endless succession of fire-balls and howitzer shells raining down on La Bisbal's streets and buildings. The environs of the town hall were partly in flames, fire had gained a hold on the flour mill beside the bridge over the Alcar, dense clouds of black and noxious smoke belched from the dormer windows of St Daniel's Convent, and two tongues of flame were darting heavenward from the roof of the presbytery.

The bells of Nuestra Señora del Pilar and the Torre Gironella pealed forth, sounding the tocsin. Detachments of grenadiers ran aimlessly through the town exchanging shouted injunctions to attack, open fire, charge, form squares, attempt a sortie. Here and there one could glimpse the pale and terrified faces of townsfolk hurrying through the streets, burdened with their belongings, to take refuge in the cellar of some neighbour's house that had so far escaped the conflagration.

The colonel dashed out of his quarters half-clad, calling repeatedly for Eglofstein and his servant, but no one heeded or recognized him. He kicked and punched his way through the yelling throng.

Then Eglofstein appeared, and I saw the colonel turn on him in a fury. The adjutant recoiled as if he had been struck and shrugged his shoulders. A moment later they were hidden from view by a phalanx of dim, silent figures: Donop was leading his company in double-quick time to the Sanroque outwork, where fighting seemed to be in progress. Borne to my ears on the wind came the sound of small-arms fire, confused shouting, and a distant flourish of drums.

When Donop's company had gone by, I again caught sight of the colonel. He was standing outside the convent door giving orders to two grenadiers, who, equipped with pickaxes and wet cloths, were about to break into the burning building. As I watched the colonel standing there with folded arms, I was transfixed by a sudden pang of horror: my sabre, doublebarrelled pistol and leather gloves must still be in the chapel, somewhere on the flagstones beside the table, together with those of Eglofstein, Donop and Brockendorf! My heart missed a beat, and everything within me cried: "Jesus Mary, those grenadiers will find them! We're done for. Now it cannot fail to come out that the signal was given by us, not the Marquis of Bolibar!"

But the two men returned, reeling and half-senseless, their beards singed and their clothes, faces and hands black with soot. One of them had his arm swathed in bloody rags where a shell splinter had pierced his wrist. They had ventured no more than a hundred paces into the convent before turning back. By the grace of God, to whom I secretly gave thanks for his assistance, every room and passage in the building was filled with a dense pall of smoke.

The colonel and Eglofstein vaulted into the saddle, and, braving the wind-fanned flames that had already engulfed the Calle Geronimo, galloped off down the street toward Santa Engracia Hospital, for word had come that this building, too, was menaced by fire.

The rest had also dispersed, so the street was now deserted. Brockendorf and I had remained behind with my corporal, Thiele, and another eight or nine of my men who were either unafraid or heedless of the danger that threatened them. Fed by the quantities of tow and oaten straw stored on the ground floor of the convent, the fire might at any moment ignite the powder kegs arrayed in the refectory, chapter house and passages. Being powerless to avert this disaster, we confined ourselves to preventing the flames from spreading to the houses round about.

Brockendorf called to me to withdraw to the other end of the street and cordon it off so that no one could approach the convent, for some loud detonations from inside the building - two in quick succession — told us that a brace of powder kegs had already gone up.

The wind howled, driving fat flakes of wet snow into my face. The street was bright as daylight, and the windows of the blazing convent glowed as though lit by the setting sun.

The guns were still thundering away at the town, but the fire near the town hall seemed to be under control at last.

I suddenly saw, as I was standing at my post, a band of horsemen galloping straight for the cordon with a clatter of hoofs, Salignac at their head.

He wore neither helmet nor cloak, but he carried a naked sabre in his hand. His grey moustache was bedraggled and his pale face convulsed with excitement. I stepped forward and barred his path.

"Your pardon, Captain, but you cannot pass."

"Out of my way," he cried, reining in just short of me.

"This street is closed. I cannot guarantee your safety."

"My safety? What business of yours is that? Look to your own. Stand aside, I say."

He spurred his charger on and brandished his sabre above my head.

"I have my orders," I shouted, "and they are —"

"To hell with your orders! Make way!"

I stood aside, and he galloped past me with his men following on behind. Once outside the convent he dismounted. His tunic and boots were plastered all over with mud as if a cannon ball had missed him by inches. He gazed around him with a wild and ferocious air.

Brockendorf came panting up from the other end of the street.

"Salignac!" he called as he came. "What in the world do you want?"