The Marquis of Bolibar (9 page)

So saying, he turned his back on us and fell to pacing the room again.

Wrapped in our cloaks, we left the house and trudged through the snowy streets in the alcalde's wake, each treading in the footprints of the man ahead. We made our way in turn along the Calle de los Arcades, the Calle de los Carmelitas, and the Calle Ancha or "Broad Street", so called because it was wide enough to enable two waggons to pass abreast. The streets were quiet and deserted, for midnight Mass was long over. Having passed the church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar and the Torre Gironella, we came to a square in which stood six lifesize stone statues of saints.

We had walked the whole way in silence, shivering with cold. The alcalde chattered without cease, pausing every hundred paces to point out various houses with his little silver- knobbed cane. This one, he told us, had been occupied until last year by a man whose cousin was a privy councillor; that one used to be the residence of Don Antonio Fernandez, a justice of the royal bench for India. On this spot, he pursued, the Archbishop of Saragossa had once been obliged to wait for an hour in the heat of the sun because one of his carriage horses had cast a shoe. The little dairy on the right of the church had last year been damaged by a fire in which the owner's wife had perished. The shop over yonder sold all that an officer might require for his comfort.

The alcalde paused to bow and cross himself while passing the church. Loosely affixed to the church door and fluttering in the wind was a sheet of paper. He pointed to it.

"Recorded there and held up to public opprobrium," he said, "are the names of all those citizens who broke their fast or failed to attend confession last Sunday. His Reverence the Cura —"

"Be damned to you and your priest!" Günther snapped at him. "Why keep us standing out here in the cold? Forward! Trot on! We didn't come with you to —"

He broke off, for he had tripped over a dead mule that lay full in our path and measured his length in the snow. Scrambling to his feet with his clothes wet through, he proceeded to heap curses on Spain and its inhabitants, whom he blamed for his misadventure.

"What a filthy, shiftless country! Rusty iron, worm-eaten timber, bug-ridden beds, streets thick with dung, fields knee- deep in weeds!"

"Look at that Spanish moon," Brockendorf chimed in. "It's out of kilter too, the daft thing. Last night it was as thin as pickled herring, and now it looks as plump as a porker."

Meantime, we had at last reached the house of Don Ramon de Alacho, Monjita's father. A squat building of neglected appearance, it stood in the square across the way from the six stone saints.

Günther seized the door-knocker and beat a tattoo.

"Hey, there! Open up, Señor Don Ramon, you've got company!"

All remained quiet inside the house. It had begun to snow again, and our cloaks and caps were turning white.

"Courage, comrade!" said Brockendorf, clapping his hands to warm them. "Break the door down - it won't be as stout as the British lines at Torres Vedras."

"Open up, Señor Slug-a-Bed de Snoreville!" yelled Günther, belabouring the door with the knocker. "Open up, or we'll kick your door and windows in!"

"Open this door, or we'll smash every stove in the house!" Brockendorf bellowed, forgetting that he was on one side of the door and the stoves on the other.

A window in the adjoining house opened and a nightcap appeared. It bobbed back into the darkened room, quick as lightning, and the window shut with a crash. Our snow- mantled cloaks had startled the sleepy citizen, who was doubtless quaking in his bed and telling his wife that the six stone saints had deserted their pedestals and were noisily disporting themselves outside Don Ramon's door.

Just then an angry voice made itself heard from a window just above our heads.

"Hell's bells and buckets of blood! Who's there?"

"So he can swear like an East India Company deck-hand, can he? Well, so can I!" said Donop. "Open up," he shouted back, "or may you catch the Spanish pox ninety-nine times over!

"Who's below?" called the voice.

"Soldiers of the Emperor!"

"Soldiers, did you say?" the voice retorted furiously. "Linen- weavers and chimney-sweeps, makers of brooms and cleaners of privies — that's what you are!"

"And who may you be, you miserable cur?" Brockendorf yelled with all his might. "Stop yapping and give us a sight of you!" He was incensed that anyone should have mistaken him for a linen-weaver or chimney-sweep, let alone a member of the guild charged with carrying away night-soil.

"Don Ramon," the voice said in a perceptibly milder tone, "go down and open the door. I wish to see the fellow that called me a miserable cur."

We heard footsteps inside the house and the creak of wooden stairs. Then the door opened to reveal a misshapen little man with a humpback as big as a molehill in May. He wore leggings of brick-red cloth, cut askew, and a brown woollen nightcap of which the tip hung down over his right ear. The torch in his hand described a fiery arc in the gloom as he gave us a mocking bow, and his shadow was that of a mule stooping to have a camp-kettle strapped to its back.

We followed him upstairs and came first to a room strewn with all manner of painter's materials. In the centre stood an easel bearing a picture of St James of Galicia, the colouring of which was complete save for the ruff and the right arm. The second room we entered was unlit, but a cheerful fire of vinewood burned on the hearth, and a man seated in an armchair was warming his feet at it with legs extended. A pair of Hessian top-boots lay on the floor beside him, and on the table were several glasses, a bottle of wine, and a big tricorn hat
à
la
russe.

The man turned his head as we entered, and the firelight revealed, to our dismay, that it was our colonel whom we had serenaded so boisterously from below. Now that we were upstairs, however, it was too late to take to our heels.

"Well, come in," the colonel called. "Which of you is the dog-fancier?"

"Eglofstein," I heard Donop whisper behind me, "you must be our spokesman - he esteems you highly."

Eglofstein stepped forward and bowed. "Colonel," he said, "I beg your pardon, but none of this was meant for you."

"Not meant?" exclaimed the colonel with a resounding laugh. "Eglofstein, I can well believe that you would sooner be anywhere than here at this moment. Amid the pepper trees of Java, eh? Gathering cinnamon in Bengal, perhaps, or in the Moluccas, where the nutmegs grow. Brockendorf, who's the cur now, I or someone else?"

Short-tempered as a rule, and prone to ungovernable outbursts of fury when plagued by one of his migraines, the colonel was tonight in such high spirits that we took advantage of his good humour.

"Colonel," said Eglofstein, pointing to Brockendorf, who stood there with the impenitent air of Barabbas in the Easter Play, "you must make allowances for him. He's not only a fool but blind drunk to boot."

"He lacks
bene distinguendum,"
Donop added in Brockendorf's defence.

"Come here, little mirror-gazer!" called the colonel, taking a pinch of snuff from his coat pocket. "Feast your eyes on the man who aspires to lead his colonel around on a leash."

At the other end of the room stood a bed, and hanging on the wall beside it were two pictures of the Virgin, a small vessel filled with holy water, and a looking glass. Standing before the latter with her back to us, tidying the artificial flowers in her hair, was a girl in Spanish costume, the black velvet bodice of which had bows and ribbons adorning every seam. She now walked lightly over to the colonel and put her arm around his shoulders.

"This is Captain Brockendorf," the colonel told her, "the man who called me a cur. See how he stands there, the drunken sot, big as an ox and proud as Goliath. He eats hens and ducks alive."

Brockendorf bared his teeth, glowered at the colonel, and said nothing.

"He's an able soldier, though, as I saw for myself at Talavera," the colonel added after a moment, and Brockendorfs face brightened at once.

"Neither a chimney-sweep nor a cleaner of privies!" he growled. Appeased, he began to stroke his enormous, pitch- waxed moustache and cast ardent glances at Monjita and the wine.

The colonel was more talkative, in his present merry mood, than I had seen him for many a long day.

"Eglofstein, Jochberg!" he sang out. "Come here and take a glass with me. Günther! Man, why stand there like a votive candle?" He filled his glass. "Damn these Spanish thimbles! Oh, for my grandfather's great, big, German catechism glass!"

We went to the table and toasted him. He drew Monjita to him and contentedly stroked his red moustache.

"Tell me, Eglofstein," he said with a sudden stirring of emotion in his voice, "is she not the living image of my dead Françoise-Marie? Her hair, her brow, her eyes, her walk! How could I ever have dreamed that I would rediscover the wife God wrested from me, here in this Spanish rat's nest?"

I stared at Monjita in surprise, unable to discern any of these several respects in which the colonel supposed her to resemble his late wife. Although her hair was of the same coppery hue as Françoise-Marie's, and although the conformation of her brow bore a vague resemblance to that of our erstwhile mistress, her general appearance was that of a wholly different person. The others, too, seemed surprised by the colonel's remark. Eglofstein smiled, and Brockendorf gaped at Monjita open-mouthed, like Tobias' fish.

"Come here, you of the burning eyes," said the colonel, taking Monjita by the hand. "You're to have some fine clothes from Paris, did you know that? I have a quantity of them in my baggage." He forbore to tell her that it was his late wife's wardrobe he carried around in his trunks and chests. "Chocolate will be served you in your bed every morning."

"But you must soon take the field again," Monjita said softly, "and God alone knows when you'll return. What will become of me while you're gone?" It was the first time we had heard her speak, and sure enough, her voice was that of our dead beloved. A thrill of joy and melancholy ran down my spine, for Françoise-Marie had once said the same words to me with the same note of sadness in her voice. That, I suspect, was the moment when we first fell prey to the delusion that afflicted us all in the days to come: the belief that we had truly rediscovered Françoise-Marie in Monjita. It was a delusion that caused us to vie bitterly for possession of her, forget the dictates of honour and duty, and contend with one another in a spirit of hatred, jealousy, and murderous passion.

"What?" cried the colonel, dealing the table such a blow with his fist that the wine bottle fell over and the array of pots and pans on the wall danced a jig. "You shall go wherever I go, and be damned to it! Massena never takes the field without a woman — he sends to Paris for another actress every six months."

"An actress?" Eglofstein shrugged disdainfully. "Most of them are merely six-groschen whores from the
petites maisons
in St Denis or St Martin, and when he tires of them he bequeathes them to his aides."

"His aides, eh?" the colonel exclaimed, eyeing Eglofstein with dark suspicion. "I have other bequests in store for
my
aides. They're to inspect their soldiers' cartridges, boots and knapsacks daily. Which reminds me, Eglofstein: have you detailed men to fell timber and fetch water tomorrow? I intend to keep you on your toes, just you wait and see!"

He was quite another man from that moment on: irascible, moody, and brusque of manner. Donop and I unobtrusively retired to the other room, where we found our portly friend the alcalde examining the half-finished St James of Galicia in company with humpbacked Don Ramon of the brick-red leggings.

"Your saint's erudition is plain to see," the alcalde was saying. "I once knew a man who claimed that St James spoke Latin in his mother's womb, but the fellow was a heretic and burned as such."

"In his lifetime," said Don Ramon, "the saint was more learned than handsome. He had a greater abundance of warts on his face than the city of Seville has church spires, but I've painted only two of them. Women are loath to buy a saint with a warty face."

"Don Ramon," I broke in. "You've sold your daughter to an old man. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Don Ramon laid aside his brush and looked at me.

"The Señor Coronel saw her at Mass and pursued her," he said. "He has promised her happiness, as people call it. She's to have fine bedlinen of Holland cloth. He'll give her a carriage and pair and a coachman, and she'll ride to Mass in style every morning."

"Is there nothing you wouldn't sell for doubloons?" Donop asked heatedly. "I'll wager you'd cut Judas down from the gallows for thirty pieces of silver. What must your St James think of such a transaction?"

"St James dwells in heaven, but I have to live in this merciless world," the hunchback said with a sigh. "I tell you, señor, and the alcalde here will testify on my behalf: it has not been easy to provide myself and my daughter with a morsel of bread each day."

"But you're a nobleman, Don Ramon," Donop raged. "Where's your integrity? Where's your sense of honour?"

"Young sir," said Don Ramon, "believe me, if this war lasts much longer, all integrity will be blighted and all honour rancid."

The colonel was now dismissing the rest of the company in the inner room.

"Eglofstein," I heard him say, "parade the men at eight. Drill them in loading the mules till nine, then have them carry bales of straw and hay to the stables. I want a calash outside this house at ten."

Eglofstein clicked his heels.

"And now, be off to your quarters. Toss a couple of billets into the stove, down a glass of mulled wine, and then pull the blanket up to your chin, eh?"

We bade him good night and went downstairs. Once outside the door, Brockendorf refused to take another step.

"I must go back," he said. "I'll wait till the colonel's gone. I must join her upstairs - I've serious matters to discuss with her."

"Come on, you fool!" hissed Eglofstein. "If you don't, the colonel will notice and turn spiteful."