The Marquis of Bolibar (21 page)

"If he learns the truth," said Eglofstein, "God help us and the regiment at large. He'll forget all about the danger of the moment, our desperate predicament, the guerrillas, the beleaguered town — he'll forget everything save how to avenge himself on all of us as bloodily as possible."

"Has Günther mentioned her name?"

"No, not yet. He's sleeping now, thank God, but earlier he spoke of her incessantly. He scolded her, he petted her, he chided and cajoled her, and the colonel stood there waiting for him to say her name as eagerly as Satan gloating over a lost soul." Eglofstein caught me by the arm. "Where are you going, Jochberg? Stay here, you'll wake him!"

Heedless of Eglofstein's warning, I tiptoed into Lieutenant von Günther's sick-room.

Günther was lying in bed, not asleep but muttering and laughing softly to himself. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes as sunken as a pair of empty walnut shells. The surgeon, who was going the rounds of the hospital, had sent one of his assistants, a beardless youth incompetent to do more than refresh the moist cloths on the wounded man's brow.

The colonel was standing at the head of the bed. He looked up as I came in, clearly displeased by my intrusion. I went over to him and reported what he already knew: that his courier had safely crossed the enemy lines an hour before. He listened without taking his eyes off Günther's lips.

"General d'Hilliers will have the letter in his hands in sixteen hours' time," he murmured. "If all goes well we should hear his vanguard's musket-fire three days from now, Jochberg, wouldn't you say? Fourteen leagues, and the roads are built of decent stone."

"Dearest one!" cried Günther, his emaciated hands groping for the woman of his feverish dreams. "Your skin is wonderfully white — white as birch bark ..."

The colonel's mouth twitched. He bent over Günther and gazed at him as if trying to wrest the name from his lips by main force, yet he already knew full well, as I did,
whose
skin was as white as birch bark.

"Other women," said Günther, chuckling delightedly to himself, "— other women swallow wax, chalk, powdered snail shells and frogs' legs. They smear their faces with a hundred ointments, but to no avail. Their skin is for ever blotched and blistered, poor creatures, whereas yours ..."

"Go on, go on!" the colonel burst out. I stood there dismayed and despairing, certain that the name would be uttered at any moment. Disaster seemed imminent, but Günther's fever continued to play a mischievous game of cat and mouse with the colonel's jealousy and my fear.

"Be off with you!" he cried, tossing and turning on the bed. "Go away, she doesn't care to see you. What are you doing here, Brockendorf? Your threadbare breeches are as transparent as my sweetheart's lace handkerchief. That comes of sitting too long in taverns, believe me. How's the wine at the 'Pelican' and the 'Blackamoor'? Surgeon? God have mercy on you, Surgeon! What have you done to me?"

His voice became hoarse and the breath issued from his throat in little gasps, and all the while his hands shook with fever.

"Surgeon!" he called again, and groaned aloud. "You'll end on the gibbet some day, mark my words. I can read men's faces like a book."

He sank back exhausted and lay there motionless with his eyes closed, breathing stertorously.

"
Foetida vomit,"
said the surgeon's assistant, and dipped a cloth in cold water. "He talks a deal of nonsense."

"Is the end near?" asked the colonel, and I could tell how frantic with fear he was lest Günther should die without uttering his beloved's name.

"
Ultima linea rerum,"
the assistant said carelessly as he laid the damp cloth on Günther's brow. "Human aid can avail him little now."

My presence seemed to have slipped the colonel's mind entirely, for he gave every appearance of noticing me again for the first time.

"You may go, Jochberg," he said with a nod. "Leave me alone with him."

I hesitated, reluctant to do as he asked. I was still debating what excuse to give for not budging when I heard footsteps and loud voices in the next room. Then the door opened and Eglofstein came in. Behind him I saw a lanky fellow whom I recognized as a corporal of the Hessian Regiment.

"Softly, softly!" hissed the colonel, indicating the wounded man. "What is it, Eglofstein?" "Colonel, this fellow belongs to Lieutenant Lohwasser's company, which is presently patrolling the streets of the town."

"Yes, yes, I know the man. Well, Corporal, what is it?"

"They're banding together and rioting, sir!" the man announced, all out of breath. "The townsfolk are attacking our sentries and patrols!"

I threw Eglofstein an admiring glance, quite convinced that he had cunningly rehearsed the corporal in this story as a plausible means of weaning the colonel from Günther's bedside, but the colonel merely laughed and shook his head.

"So they've risen in revolt, have they, those pious Christians? Who sent you, Corporal?"

"Lieutenant Lohwasser himself, sir."

"I thought as much." The colonel turned to us and chuckled. "Lohwasser is a scatterbrain — he's for ever imagining things. Tomorrow he'll doubtless report having seen three fiery serpents or Sanctornus the hunchbacked goblin."

At that moment, however, we heard a thunder of footsteps outside. The door was flung open and Lieutenant Donop rushed in.

"Insurrection!" he cried, flushed and breathless from running. "They've attacked our pickets in the marketplace!"

The colonel stopped laughing and turned as white as chalk. The ensuing hush was broken by Günther, now so delirious that he could no longer tell night from day.

"Light the lamp, damn you!" he babbled. "Are you trying to play blind-man's-buff with me, or what?"

"Have the Spaniards gone mad?" the colonel exclaimed. "Fancy attacking our pickets! Hundreds of their countrymen have perished on the gallows for less. What can have possessed them?"

"Brockendorf—" Donop began, then hesitated.

"What of Brockendorf? Where is he?"

"Still in the church."

"In the church? Hell's teeth, is this the moment to hear a sermon? Does he mean to pray for a good wine-harvest while the Spaniards are rioting in the streets?" "Brockendorf and his company have taken up their quarters in the church of Nuestra Señora."

"Quarters ... in the church!" Purple with rage, the colonel opened and shut his mouth like a stranded fish. He seemed about to choke or fall to the ground in an apoplectic fit.

"I'm dying, God help me," Günther groaned, tossing and turning on the bed. "A thousand good nights, my dearest..."

"He says," Donop ventured, "— that's to say, Colonel, Brockendorf claims that you yourself gave the order."

"That
I
gave the order?" fumed the colonel. "So that's it. Now I understand why the Spaniards are in revolt."

He controlled himself with an effort and turned to the corporal.

"You there, double away and fetch me Captain Brockendorf. And you, Donop, summon the priest and the alcalde. Quickly! Why are you still standing there? Eglofstein!"

"Colonel?"

"Those cannon at the crossroads, are they loaded?"

"With case-shot, Colonel. Shall I —"

"Don't open fire unless I order it. Two troops of cavalry will clear the streets."

"With live ammunition?"

"With the butts of their carbines!" the colonel snapped. "I told you: not a shot is to be fired without a direct order from me. Do you want to bring the guerrillas down on our heads?"

"Understood, Colonel."

"Double all pickets. Take ten men, occupy the prefecture and arrest the members of the junta as soon as they assemble. Jochberg?"

"Colonel?"

"Find Captain Castel-Borckenstein. He and his company are to take post in the courtyard behind the guard-house. Not a shot unless I order it, do you understand?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"Then God go with you."

Half a minute later we were all on the way to our appointment with destiny.

I hurried along the Calle de los Carmelitas with Eglofstein and his men. In the distance, beyond the convent's blackened ruins, we glimpsed the fleeing forms of two Spaniards armed with pitchforks. Our ways parted at the end of the street. Eglofstein was eager to be off, but I, struck by a sudden thought, caught hold of his hands.

"Captain," I said hurriedly, "everything has turned out as the Marquis of Bolibar intended."

"It seems you were right after all, Jochberg," he replied, and made to go.

"Listen," I said. "Günther gave the first signal, that I know for sure. We ourselves — you and I and Brockendorf and Donop — gave the second, and the revolt was provoked by Brockendorf alone. Where, in God's name, is that knife?"

"What knife do you mean, Jochberg?"

"On Christmas Eve, when you had the Marquis shot, you took possession of the knife Saracho gave him — a dagger with an ivory hilt portraying the Virgin and Christ's corpse, don't you remember? It's the last of the three signals. Where did you put that dagger, Captain? I cannot rest while I know you have it."

"The knife," Eglofstein repeated, knitting his brow, "— the dagger . . . Ah yes, the colonel saw me with it and begged it from me for the sake of its fine workmanship. I no longer have it."

My heart leapt at this news.

"All's well, then," I said. "If what you say is true, I'm content. The colonel will never give the third signal, of that I'm certain."

"No indeed, not he," Eglofstein replied with a hollow laugh that failed to disguise his latent guilt and remorse.

On that note we parted and went our separate ways.

THE BLUE BUTTERCUP

I reached Castel-Borckenstein's quarters with ease, for the insurrection was then in its early stages. My return journey was twice as difficult and dangerous, and I soon regretted not having taken a few of Castel-Borckenstein's men with me for protection. Angry rioters were surging through the streets and a hundred furious voices cursing us for a pack of unbelievers whose sole intention was to profane the Christian religion and desecrate its places of worship. Indeed, we were even accused of planning to carry children off to Algiers, there to sell them into slavery. It being customary to paint the Devil in pitch, the priests had spread the blackest lies about us, and the hate-filled mob believed them all, no matter how brazenly false and nonsensical.

Remembering that the colonel had been left alone with Günther, I quickened my pace and, heedless of the pandemonium in the streets, took the shortest way back. I was accosted in the Calle de los Arcades by an old man who warned me to go no further because the end of the street was held by thirty armed Spaniards. This did not alarm me overmuch. In a pinch I could use my pistols to make them see reason, whereas they, whose fire-arms we had confiscated on the morrow of our arrival, had nothing but cudgels, scythes and bread-knives. As I continued on my way, however, a stone whizzed past my head and a woman at a window called out that we were enemies of the Holy Trinity and spurners of the Mother of God, and that Germany was a land inhabited by fire-breathing heretics who merited extinction. Having decided in the end to avoid the main thoroughfare in favour of byways and vegetable gardens, I reached the Calle de los Carmelitas somewhat belated but unscathed.

A half-squadron of dragoons was drawn up outside the colonel's headquarters, awaiting his order to go into action against the insurgents. The priest and the alcalde were just descending the steps under escort, and I learned that they had been instructed to see to it that the rioters laid down their arms and went home within half an hour. On the expiration of that time, any armed civilian encountered in the streets would be summarily shot by the dragoons.

Both men, the priest and the alcalde, looked dismayed and dejected, and seemed far from confident that they would succeed in their mission. Behind them came Brockendorf, the luckless author of the present imbroglio. Since the trio and their escort took up the entire width of the steps, I could not but overhear the heated words that passed between them.

"Our church," the priest exclaimed, "has been ransacked from end to end. All the holy pictures have been stolen."

"That's a lie - a damnable, double-dyed lie!" Brockendorf retorted angrily. "I carried them into the sacristy with my own hands."

"Your men have tethered their horses to the saints' arms," wailed the alcalde. "Horse dung covers the floor knee-deep and the fonts have been converted into mangers. You've made a stable of the house of God!"

Brockendorf blandly ignored this accusation.

"When we hang you," he told the alcalde, "the whole revolt will collapse like a cold syllabub. This town is full of rogues and the gibbets are all untenanted."

The alcalde shot him a venomous glance. I tried to slip past, but Brockendorf caught me by the arm and gestured at the alcalde as if to convey that he was sorry, the matter was out of his hands.

"He must hang," he said. "A pity, for he's a fool of the entertaining sort. He knows an abundance of extremely lewd jests, and I've more than once laughed myself sick at him. Adieu, Jochberg, I'm off to my quarters. The colonel has placed me under arrest."

"Yes, by the grace of God Almighty and Christ and his saints," the priest sighed with wholehearted sincerity.

"Leave Christ and his saints out of this!" cried Brockendorf, stung that the priest should have rendered thanks to God for his punishment. "Words like those sit ill on the lips of a rebel."

I myself upbraided him for having provoked the insurrection, but he rejected my rebuke.

"The sole reason for all this pandemonium," he declared, "is that the Spaniards have taken their quadruples and gold
onzas,
and whatever else they call ducats in this accursed land, and hidden them beneath the flagstones of the church, and now they're afraid I may unearth them. Oh, they're cunning foxes, these Spaniards!"

He released my arm at last, and I ran up the steps. My first glance on entering the orderly-room was directed at the colonel.

He was standing at Günther's bedside, just as I had left him. His face still wore a look of brooding expectancy from which I inferred that our secret had not yet come out. Heedless of the uproar in the streets, he continued to stand listening to the confessions of a man in delirium and striving to interpret his confused hallucinations.