The Marquis of Bolibar (5 page)

"The glory your exploit will bring you —" he ventured.

"Glory?" the Marquis broke in angrily. "Know this, Captain: no glory derives from battle and conquest. I despise war, which for ever compels us to do evil. The humble peasant who innocently tills his field is more glorious than any general or marshal, for his poor hands tend soil which the rest of us have profaned and defiled with our blood-letting."

At these words, all who stood round the dying fire fell silent and stared with surprise and respect at the man who despised war, yet took it upon himself to perform war's bloody work in expiation of the treason committed by someone of his name.

"I am a soldier," Saracho said at long last, "and I shall persuade you of the glory that war can bring a gallant soldier when our venture is successfully concluded, Señor Marques, for I shall recognize you."

"If you recognize me, have pity and refrain from addressing me by my name, which is disgraced to all eternity. Look away and let me walk on unrecognized. And now, farewell."

"Farewell," the captain called after him, "and may heaven assist you in your undertaking."

While the Marquis was striding off, Saracho turned to the captain and said in a low voice, "I doubt if the Marques de Bolibar —"

He broke off, for the Marquis had halted and looked back.

"You turn your head on hearing your name, Señor Marques," Saracho called, laughing loudly. "That is how I shall know you again."

"You're right, and I thank you. I must teach my ear to be deaf to the sound of my name."

That, it seems, was the moment when the Marquis of Bolibar hit upon the idea whose execution I observed in his garden the following day, not that I grasped the purpose of such a strange proceeding. Lieutenant von Röhn, meanwhile, was consumed with fear and impatience. Knowing that he alone could preserve the Nassau Regiment from the danger that threatened it at La Bisbal, he could hardly wait for his servant to release him from his hiding place and convey him there. He was tormented by the fear that Bolibar, having reached the town before him and vanished unhindered into the crowd, would put his terrible scheme into effect.

But now at last Saracho gave the order to depart. The guerrillas promptly sprang to their feet and began bustling to and fro. Some fetched the wounded from the chapel, others loaded the mules with baskets of victuals, wineskins, and valises. Some sang as they worked, a few bickered, the mules set up a piercing din, the muleteers cursed. In the midst of this turmoil the British captain suspended his camp kettle over the fire and prepared some tea for breakfast. Saracho, who had attached a lantern and a mirror to the tree beside the Virgin and Child, was shaving in haste. Glancing at the mirror and the Madonna in turn, he scraped away at his beard and prayed as he did so.

SNOW ON THE ROOFS

At the hour of the rosary, or vespers, on the evening of the same day, the Marquis of Bolibar made his way without let or hindrance through the Puerta del Sol. No one recognized him, and he might well have escaped detection, like an eel in a turbid stream, amid the water-carriers and fishmongers, spice and oil merchants, wool-dressers and friars who crowded around the church door to say their Hail Marys and greet familiar faces. It was, however, his misfortune to become privy to the secret that bound the five of us together - the other four and myself - with bonds of memory. What secret? Ours and that of the dead Françoise-Marie, which at other times we kept locked away in the depths of our hearts, and of which we that night bragged to one another, fuddled with Alicante wine and stricken with homesickness by the sight of the snow on the roofs.

And the ragged muleteer who sat in the corner of my room, a rosary in his hands, overheard that secret and had to die.

We ordered him shot beside the town wall, secretly and in haste, without trial or absolution. None of us dreamed that it was the Marquis of Bolibar who fell bleeding into the snow beneath our bullets, nor did we guess what a curse he had laid upon us before he died.

I had command of the gate guard that evening. Toward six o'clock I detailed the night pickets that were to patrol the town wall at intervals of half an hour. My sentries, with their loaded carbines hidden beneath their cloaks, stood silent and motionless like saints in their niches.

It began to snow. Snowy weather was no great rarity in that mountainous region, it seemed, but we had never seen snowflakes in Spain before that evening.

I had two copper pans filled with glowing ashes brought to my room, there being no stoves in the houses of La Bisbal. The smoke stung my eyes and the snowstorm made the windows rattle with a faint, menacing sound, but the room was warm and snug. In the corner lay my couch of freshly gathered heather with a cloak draped over it. The makeshift table and benches were fashioned from planks and barrels, and on the table were gourds filled with wine, for I was awaiting a visit from my comrades, who proposed to spend Christmas Eve with me.

I could hear the voices of my dragoons as they lay talking on the floor of the loft overhead, wrapped in their cloaks. Without a sound, I tiptoed up the wooden stairs.

I often prowled among my men in the dark and listened to them conversing, for I was in constant dread lest our secret had been discovered, and lest the dragoons, when they thought themselves alone and out of earshot at night, should whisper to each other of the dead Françoise-Marie and her surreptitious goings-on.

Although the loft was as dark as a bake-oven, I recognized Sergeant Brendel's voice.

"Did you find the fellow who made off with your purse?" he was asking.

"I gave chase," replied a glum voice, "but I couldn't catch him. He's gone, and he'll take good care not to come back."

"All these Spaniards are the same!" another man said angrily. "They pray their mouths off from dawn till dusk, empty the fonts of holy water out of sheer piety and devotion, and all the while the rogues and bloodsuckers are debating how best to cheat and rob us."

"When we were quartered in Corbosa five days ago," I heard Corporal Thiele say, "one such unhung thief — one of the waggoners, he was — made off with a chest belonging to our colonel. It contained the bonnets and petticoats of his late lamented wife, and now the thief has borne them off to his stinking lair!"

Our colonel was so reluctant to be parted from the dead Françoise-Marie's clothes that he carried them in his baggage wherever he went. Now, on hearing the dragoons speak of his wife, I felt my heart begin to pound in the certainty that our secret had been discovered. But I heard not another word about Françoise-Marie. The dragoons proceeded to grumble at the campaign and their generals, and Sergeant Brendel fiercely castigated Marshal Soult and his staff.

"Let me tell you something," he exclaimed. "Those gentlemen who go to war in their carriages and carioles are often more frightened under fire than the likes of us. At Talavera I saw them cower like mules when the case-shot was flying."

"We have worse foes than shells," said someone else. "Our worst foes are these nonsensical marches back and forth, eight hours at a stretch, to hang some wretched peasant or priest. Shells do us less harm than damp ground, lice, and half rations."

"And the mutton, don't forget the mutton," said Dragoon Stüber. "It stinks to high heaven. Why, sparrows fall lifeless from the air when they fly over it!"

"Soult cares nothing for his men, that's the truth of the matter," Corporal Thiele said gloomily. "He's a niggard - wealth and honours are all he craves. He may be a marshal and Duke of Dalmatia, but believe me, he isn't fit to fill a corporal's boots."

Not another word about Françoise-Marie. I listened in vain, hearing naught save the eternal criticisms of the Spanish campaign with which the soldiers customarily whiled away the time before falling asleep in their billets, fatigued by marching and fighting. I let them argue and politicize to their hearts' content. They performed their duties none the worse for that.

At length, hearing Lieutenant Günther's voice below, I hurried downstairs to my room and lit a lamp.

Günther was patting the snow from his uniform. Lieutenant Donop, with Virgil peeping out of his pocket as usual, had also turned up. Donop was the most intelligent and erudite of my comrades. He knew Latin, was well-versed in ancient history, and always travelled with a few fine editions of the Roman classics in his baggage.

We sat down, drank wine, and fell to cursing our Spanish landlords and our wretched billets. Donop complained that his room had neither stove nor fireplace and a piece of oiled paper in lieu of a windowpane. "Let someone else try reading the
Aeneid
in there!" he said with a sigh.

"Every wall is covered with pictures of saints, but there isn't a clean bed in the house," Günther said peevishly of his own quarters. "Prayer books lie heaped in the kitchen, but I've yet to see a ham or a sausage."

"It's impossible to carry on a sensible conversation with my landlord," Donop said. "He spends the whole day mumbling the name of the Holy Virgin, and whenever I come home he's on his knees before some St James or Dominic."

"For all that," I interposed, "they say the citizens of La Bisbal are well-disposed toward the French. Your health, comrade! I drink to you."

"And I to you, comrade, but they also say that disguised priests and insurgents are hiding in the town."

"Very meek insurgents," said Günther. "They neither shoot at us nor murder us — they confine themselves to despising us. "

"I'll wager my landlord is a priest in disguise," said Donop, chuckling to himself. "I know of no other trade that makes a man so fat."

He passed his glass across the table and I refilled it. Just then the door burst open and Captain Brockendorf came blundering into the room in a cloud of wind-blown snowflakes.

He must already have been drinking somewhere, because his full moon of a face, with its huge, crimson scar, was gleaming like a freshly hammered copper kettle. His cap sat askew over his left ear, his black moustache was waxed, and his two thick black braids hung stiffly from temples to chest. "Well, Jochberg," he bellowed, "have you caught him?"

"Not yet," I replied, knowing that he meant the Marquis of Bolibar.

"My Lord Marquis is taking his time. The weather isn't clement enough for him — he's afraid it may spoil his shoes."

Brockendorf bent over the table and put his nose to the gourds.

"What holy water is that in Bacchus's font?"

"Alicante wine from the priest's cellar."

"Alicante, eh?" Brockendorf cried gaily. "
Allons
, that's worth making a beast of oneself for!"

When Brockendorf "made a beast" of himself in honour of good wine, he stripped off his tunic, waistcoat and shirt and sat there naked save for his breeches and boots and the mat of shaggy black hair on his chest. Two old women who were passing our windows in the street stopped short and stared into the room aghast. They crossed themselves, doubtless wondering what had met their eyes, a human being or some outlandish monster.

We all proceeded to do justice to the wine, and for a while no conversation could be heard beyond "I toast you, comrade!" or "I thank you, brother!" or "Your health, comrade.
Proficiat!"

"I wish I were at home in Germany and had some Barbara or Dorothea in my bed tonight," Günther said suddenly in a maudlin voice, disheartened by his lack of success with the Spanish women whom he had been pursuing all day long. Brockendorf chaffed him. He himself, he said, would rather be a crane or a stork so that the wine took longer to travel down his throat. By now the Alicante was beginning to go to our heads. Donop was loudly declaiming Horace above the din when Eglofstein, the regimental adjutant, strode into the room.

I sprang up and submitted my report.

"No other news, Jochberg?" he asked.

"None."

"Has no one passed the guards at the gate?"

"A Benedictine prior come from Barcelona to visit his sister in the town — the alcalde vouches for him — and an apothecary and his wife and daughter passing through here on the way to Bilbao. Their papers were issued by General d'Hilliers' headquarters and are perfectly in order."

"No one else?"

"Two townsmen left here this morning to do a day's work in their vineyards. They were given laissez-passers and presented them on their return."

"Very good. Thank you."

"Eglofstein, I drink to you!" called Brockendorf, brandishing his glass. "Your health! Come, my old crane, sit here by me."

Eglofstein looked at our tipsy comrade and smiled. Donop, still steady on his feet, came over to him with two glasses of wine.

"Captain," he said, "we're gathered here tonight to await the Marquis of Bolibar. Bide with us and greet him, when he appears, on behalf of the officers of the regiment."

"To hell with all counts and marquises - liberty for ever!" roared Brockendorf. "Devil take the perfumed puppets with their bag-wigs and
chapeaux
bas!"

"I have to visit the pickets and the men detailed to guard the flour mills and bakehouses, but no matter, they can wait," said Eglofstein, and joined us at the table.

"Sit by me, Eglofstein!" Brockendorf bellowed drunkenly. "You've grown proud — you've forgotten how the two of us picked grains of corn out of horse dung to keep from starving in Prussia." Wine had made the big, strong man lachrymose and melancholy. He propped his forehead on his fists and began to sob. "Do you never think, of that any more? Ah, what a worm-eaten thing is friendship!"

"The war isn't done yet, comrade," said Eglofstein. "We may yet make another midday meal of nettles and leaves stewed in salt water, as we did at Küstrin."

"And when the war's over," said Donop, "the Emperor will be quick to start another."

"All the better!" cried Brockendorf, who had suddenly regained his high spirits. "My purse is empty, comrade, and I still have to win myself the Légion d'Honneur."

He proceeded to recite the engagements in which he had taken part during the Spanish campaign — Zorzola, Almaraz, Talavera, Mesa de Ibor - but got stuck halfway through, even though he enlisted his fingers as an aid to enumeration and had to begin all over again. The heat in the cramped little room had become unbearable. Donop opened the window, and the chill night air streamed in and cooled our brows.