The Marquis of Bolibar (24 page)

Panic and confusion reigned on all sides. Everyone jostled and yelled and shoved. Bricks, earthenware pitchers, billets of firewood, iron implements, shingles, spits, tin cans, cooking pots and empty bottles rained down on our heads from every window. In the entrance of one house, at the top of some stairs leading down to the cellar, a young woman big with child stood firing a double-barrelled pistol into the street, reloading again and again. A man beside me paused and took aim at her. Then the moon disappeared behind the clouds and I saw no more. We ran on in the gloom, hearing cries of encouragement and despair all around us.

"My horse has gone! Where's my horse?"

"Courage, men! Wait till they come within range!"

"Where to, where to? All I can see is snow."

"Dragoons! Sons of France! Stand fast and club your carbines!"

"My knapsack!"

"On your feet, man! Pull yourself together, we must press on!"

"Ready, aim, fire!"

"Here I am, over here!"

"I'm hit, I can't go on."

"They're coming!"

"Forward, forward!"

Someone knocked me to the ground. All I felt for a moment was wet snow against my face and a stabbing pain in the back of the head. What happened to me then I cannot recall. Although I did not lose consciousness for an instant, my recollection of the next few minutes is a dark void.

When I came to myself I was being half supported, half dragged along by two grenadiers. I felt thirsty. My left arm was aching badly, as were my head and both shoulders. I fired my pistol twice, but at whom I cannot remember.

There were seven of us. All but two had discarded their weapons and nearly all were wounded.

And then we came in sight of the marketplace, which was brightly lit and thronged with men. We shouted for joy and embraced each other, thinking ourselves safe at last, when we found it held by three companies of grenadiers drawn up in defensive squares with the colonel sitting his horse in their midst.

It seemed that the regiment had been split in three at the very outset of the fighting. One group held out for a while near the presbytery and another took cover behind the trees and hedges of the hospital garden, which was later stormed by guerrillas and insurgent townsfolk. The three companies in the marketplace were still in good shape, however, and the plan was that we should try to fight our way through to the river.

Only snatches of the ensuing battle linger in my memory. Donop was standing beside me at one point. He spoke to me and offered me a drink from his canteen. Later I remember kneeling behind a baggage waggon, firing my carbine into a close-packed mass of attackers while a grenadier beside me drank cold soup from an earthenware bowl.

I could see the windows of my billet from where I knelt. They were lit up, and I glimpsed the shadowy forms of unknown intruders flitting to and fro behind them. It occurred to me as I pulled the trigger that I had left some books lying on my table — French romances and a volume of German pasquinades.

The air was filled with a symphony of hisses, roars and whistles, rattling musketry, shrill screams, shouted orders, and the Spaniards' incessant "
Caraxo! Caraxo!"
Castel-Borckenstein was carried past me unconscious with blood welling from his boots. His servant followed behind, angrily shaking his empty musket at the enemy. Across the way, brightly illumined by torchlight outside the door of the "Blood of Christ" inn, St Antony held his stone arms aloft and continued to testify, amid the din and pother of battle, that Mary's conception was immaculate.

Immediately after Castel-Borckenstein was wounded came the order to retire. A half-company led the way in close order along the Calle Ambrosio with the colonel bringing up the rear.

Suddenly I saw him sway in the saddle. Two men sprang to his aid and held him up. He was past speaking, it seemed, but he gestured fiercely in the direction of the guerrillas. I lost sight of him in the press soon afterward. Donop called loudly, two or three times, for a litter.

All discipline was lost from then on. I was swept along by a tide of humanity and found myself in the Calle Geronimo, which seethed with running, shouting men, all striving to be the first to reach the bridge and the river bank. For some reason I never discovered, most of them later turned about and ran back again. Donop was still close beside me. While running — such is the picture of him I preserve to this day - he staunched a sabre-cut on his cheek with a piece of cloth torn from the lining of his tunic.

I dimly recall a brief mêlée near the nailsmith's forge, which had been destroyed by fire. Another of my memories is of a cascade of boiling water that landed just short of my feet. A few drops splashed my hand.

We found, when we came to the river, that the guerrillas had occupied the bridge. Some of our men tried to reach the farther bank by wading and swimming. They fought the current shoulder-deep, but the icy water numbed their limbs and they sank below the surface one by one. Meanwhile, the guerrillas poured case-shot into our ranks from the bridge.

We ran back the way we had come, keeping close to the walls. None of us now had any thought of safety or escape. There was neither hope nor despair in our hearts, just a mute determination to defend ourselves to the last. We sought no way out of our predicament, merely a spot where we could fight to the death bare-handed, man against man.

We entered a steep, narrow street in which I had never set foot before. This was where Donop fell. I made to help him up, thinking that he had slipped on the frozen ground, but a musket ball had lodged in his throat. He reached for my hand and gave me all his belongings: a silver fob-watch, two packets of letters, two bank-notes, a few gold Napoleons, a translation of Suetonius which he himself had begun, a small silver tablet adorned with mythological figures in relief, and a half-empty bottle of wine. A grenadier stooping under the weight of his pack, to which he had tied his boots, a copper kettle and a silver punch-bowl, interrupted his flight long enough to cast a covetous glance at the coins in my hand. I pocketed the things Donop had given me, but most of them I lost within minutes. All that I still have today is the little silver tablet portraying Venus and the Hours.

While hurrying on we heard a shrill whistle, which was answered from two directions. Almost simultaneously, we came under fire from our front. We halted and looked around in search of cover.

The door of the house beside us was quickly broken down with a musket butt. Beyond it lay a winding wooden staircase dimly lit by an oil-lamp burning in a niche below the image of some saint or other. The room at the head of the stairs appeared to be the store-room of a baker or confectioner. It contained sacks of flour, baskets filled with chestnuts and walnuts, a barrel of eggs packed in oaten straw, and a box of chocolate with the words "Pantin, rue Saint-Anne à Marseille" inscribed in black on the lid.

We left the door open, loaded our carbines, and took cover behind a stout table. We did not have long to wait, for footsteps could already be heard on the stairs.

A head came into view - a bony face surmounted by short, bristly hair. I recognized it at once as belonging to the spice merchant on the corner of the Calle de los Carmelitas. I raised my pistol, but someone behind me was quicker and fired first. Other figures appeared and rushed at us, shots rang out, an axe came hurtling across the table, powder-smoke filled the room.

We were alone when the air cleared, but only four of us were still standing. Our attackers could be heard blundering and tumbling down the stairs. We reloaded all our fire-arms including those of the two dead and laid them ready on the table in front of us.

One of the grenadiers, who reminded me that we had been schoolfellows years ago, begged a pinch of snuff. Another, too footsore to run any further, pulled his boots off. I myself was dropping with fatigue.

Then they came a second time.

A bullet whistled past my ear and something crashed to the ground behind me. Curses and shouts rent the air, two hands gripped my throat, and I was hurled to the floor.

"Make way!" a voice called from the door as I fell. Poised above me was an upraised sword. It hovered there for an eternity - hovered but did not descend.

"Stand aside, I say!" It was the same voice. Someone shone a lantern on my face, dazzling me. The sword disappeared, and in its place I saw a white panache and a scarlet cloak.

The hands slowly detached themselves from my throat. My head fell back and struck the edge of a crate.

"What madness to remain in that disguise," said the voice in my ear, then: "Pick him up! Carry him downstairs!"

I felt myself hoisted into the air.

"I warned you, did I not?" I heard. "There was always a danger that my men would fail to recognize you."

I tried to open my eyes, but it was no use. The wind struck cold and damp on my cheeks. Someone spread a cloak over me. I felt a rocking, swaying motion, and it seemed to me that I was on the river again, sitting in the skiff with Monjita while the current sent ice-floes bumping along the sides and willow trees rustled on the bank.

Then all was still. The rocking sensation ceased, and I was bedded down on something soft.

"Who the devil is that, Captain?" asked a gruff, surly voice.

"The Marquis of Bolibar," came the reply.

Another beam of light on my face, whispers, muffled footsteps. The footsteps grew fainter and a door closed.

I fell asleep.

THE MARQUIS OF BOLIBAR

It was late in the day when I awoke.

Still dazed with sleep and unable to open my eyes,- I had a vague feeling that the room where I lay was thronged with people standing shoulder to shoulder and watching me in silence. By the time I was fully awake, the last three were tiptoeing out, each gesturing to the others to tread softly and steal away without a sound.

Only two men remained: the captain in the Northumberland Fusiliers, who stood over my bed in his scarlet cloak, arms folded, and, seated beside the fire, Colonel Saracho.

As soon as I saw the latter, the events of the previous day, which sleep had suffered me to forget, came flooding back: the guerrillas' onslaught, the deaths of the colonel and Donop and Castel-Borckenstein, the annihilation of both regiments. Boundless amazement overcame me that I should still be alive, followed at once by a numbing pang of terror that one of the men confronting me should be my mortal foe, the Tanner's Tub. An instant later, however, my fear was displaced by a profoundly soothing thought: as the last survivor of the regiment I had no right to go on living, and what better fate could I wish for than to join my comrades in the grave?

"He's awake," I heard the British officer say.

Saracho gave a hoarse exclamation that sounded like a groan. Clearly visible in the firelight, his legs were stretched out on a chair and thickly swathed in rags on account of the podagra from which he had suffered for years. His left arm was bandaged from elbow to shoulder.

"My respects, Señor Marques," he grunted as he scratched one gouty ankle. "How is Your Excellency feeling?"

I stared at him, convinced that he was making mock of me.

"Finding you was no easy matter," the British captain reported. "It was only pure chance, My Lord Marquis, that granted me the honour of escorting you to safety."

I sprang to my feet. Destiny had chosen the strangest way of saving my life, I saw that now. A shiver ran down my spine at the thought that I should have been cast in the role of one whom I had helped to murder, and I resolved to end the grisly masquerade at once.

"I am not the man you take me for," I told the captain, forcing myself to look him in the eye. "The Marquis of Bolibar is long dead. I am a German officer in the service of the Confederation of the Rhine."

Having made this avowal, I awaited my fate with an easy mind.

The Britisher looked first at Saracho and then at me.

"Ah yes," he said with a smile, "I know: the same German officer who presented himself at Your Lordship's country seat some days ago, just half an hour after you disappeared - a strange coincidence of which I was apprised by your steward, Fabricio. He came here this morning while you slept."

"Damnation," Saracho interjected, "I've a nail-maker's smithy in these legs of mine - no one would believe how they prick and twinge."

"You're mistaken, Captain," I exclaimed. "I am Lieutenant Jochberg of the Nassau Regiment."

"Late of the Nassau Regiment, yes, My Lord Marquis, and the strangest by far of all the soldiers in the Emperor's service. "

"Soldiers, you call them?" Saracho cried angrily. He made to rise, only to sink back in his chair with an anguished groan. "Soldiers, did you say? Libertines, more like — lechers and braggarts, gamblers and drunkards, liars and gluttons, despoilers of churches. God is just and his retribution well- merited!"

I was overcome with grief and rage when I heard my dead comrades reviled in this way. I started toward Saracho, intending to throttle him with my bare hands, but the British officer barred my path.

"So you take me for the Marquis of Bolibar," I said, when I had regained my composure. "Why? The Marquis was an elderly man, whereas I am only eighteen years old."

Saracho gave a bleating laugh.

"Eighteen, eh? A fine age, to be sure. The candle-maker across the way from the church — you knew him, Señor Marques, he was so thin he might have been sired by a ramrod — well, that man was fifty years old when he took his third wife, and for the wedding he dyed his hair as handsome a brown as yours was yesterday.
He
looked eighteen too, but not for long. A pity you wasted all that goat's grease, pomade and beeswax, Señor Marques. It hasn't lasted longer than a night. "

He laughed again and pointed to a broken mirror on the wall. I caught sight of my reflection and blenched, unable to believe my eyes: the terrible events of the previous night had turned my hair white — snow-white, like that of an old man.

"You do wrong, My Lord Marquis," said the captain's voice in my ear. "You do wrong to try to flee the world in that disguise. You played your part in a great and noble venture. Heaven was with you, so it succeeded. You should not belittle that glorious deed. You should not disdain the gratitude owed you by us all — by your native land and the cause of freedom."