The Marquis of Bolibar (10 page)

"Why the devil did we come too late?" Günther complained. "God, how beautiful she is! She has Françoise-Marie's hair."

Overwhelmed with disappointment, we all went our way in sullen silence - all, that is, save Eglofstein, who hummed cheerfully to himself.

"You simpletons!" he said at length, when we were a pistolshot from Don Ramon's house. "Think yourselves lucky! Our colonel has acquired another wife. If she really resembles his first in every way, as he believes, will he be able to keep her to himself?"

We paused and looked at each other, all with the same thought in mind.

"It's true!" said Donop. "Did you see how the girl caressed me with her eyes when I took leave of her?"

"And me!" Brockendorf exclaimed. "She gazed at me as if to say ..."

Brockendorf had forgotten what her gaze was intended to convey. He yawned, turned, and directed a lovesick glance at Monjita's window.

"All she possesses is a pretty face and a fine figure," said Günther. "I'll warrant she won't be too unkind when she learns that I've eight Carolingian thalers sewn into my coat collar."

"Long live our colonel and his new wife!" cried Eglofstein. "We'll soon be leading our former life again in
floribus
and
amoribus
— am I right, Donop?"

We shook hands and trudged back to our billets through the deep snow, each of us afire with the hope that he would be Monjita's first choice. It was an eternity before I got to sleep, for Günther, with whom I shared my room that night, insisted on rehearsing the speech he proposed to make Monjita in Spanish. "Fair damsel," he declaimed before the mirror, gesturing like an inferior play-actor bestriding the stage, "God save your soul! I lay my heart at your feet, señorita!"

TROUNCED

For the next few days we toiled away at our duties — at drilling and riding, improving the earthworks, and inspecting the men, stables and billets. Günther and Brockendorf devoted their leisure hours to playing cards at "The Blood of Christ", an inn where decent wine and a warm room were always to be had, and filled it with the clamour of their altercations. Donop and I, who went riding almost daily, brought back partridge, quail, and, on one occasion, a hare. We were cautious the first time, keeping close together and not venturing more than half an hour's ride from the outermost defences. Later, when we found the roads safe and the peasants everywhere at their work, men and women alike, we became bolder and extended our forays far beyond the villages of Figueras and Truxillo.

Of the guerrillas we saw no sign whatever. Such was the peace that reigned in field and vineyard, and such were the courtesy, candour and lack of hostility with which the villagers greeted us, that the region seemed quite innocent of rebellion and ambuscade. The cruel and fanatical Tanner's Tub might never have existed.

Having read all that the ancients had committed to writing since the time of Aristotle, Donop never tired, during these excursions, of telling me how closely the Spanish countryside still resembled the descriptions of it recorded by Lucan in his account of Cato's journey to Utica. The way in which women pounded their sodden laundry on riverside stones had remained unchanged for over two thousand years, he said, and every passing ox-cart filled him with delight because it so vividly recalled the copperplate illustrations of such conveyances in his edition of Virgil's
Georgics.
According to the writers of old, he assured me, the countryside hereabouts was carpeted in summer-time with rosemary and lavender, sage and thyme. He accosted everyone we met on the highroad, whether shepherd, farm-hand, or wood-cutter, but failed to elicit any botanical information because he carried the Latin, but not the Spanish, names of all these plants in his memory.

I had not seen Monjita again since the night we encountered our colonel at her father's house. It seemed that the priest, in response to a request from the colonel, had called on the humpbacked painter the following morning. Some hours later a calash had driven up and conveyed Monjita to the Marquis of Bolibar's town house. This building, which boasted two Saracens' heads over its portal and was situated in the Calle de los Carmelitas, had been chosen by the colonel as his headquarters. The ground floor was given over to the guard, the top floor to Eglofstein's orderly-room.

The inhabitants of La Bisbal, modest, humble folk who earned their daily bread by cultivating olives or vines, dealing in grain or dressing coarse wool, were at first surprised and disconcerted by Monjita's change of abode. In the course of time, however, they welcomed it, feeling highly flattered and honoured that the choice of so senior an officer should have fallen on a neighbour's daughter known to them all since her childhood. Although there had previously been a few disaffected townsfolk who eyed us with contempt 'twixt cloak and hat-brim and secretly called us godless heretics whose extermination would be a meritorious act, all the faces we now encountered were amiable and contented or, at worst, simply curious. What was more, their priest assured them from the pulpit that the Spanish and German nations were on friendly terms — indeed, that they had, to their common renown, been allies since the time of Emperor Charles the Fifth.

Donop and I rode up and down the Calle de los Carmelitas, evening after evening, showing off our horses' voltes and halts, but never once did we set eyes on Monjita. Nothing stirred behind the barred windows, and the Saracens' stone faces gazed mutely down on us from above the door.

Toward noon on the Sunday after Christmas, Eglofstein came to my room to accompany me to dinner, for we were always invited to join our colonel's table when resting in quarters on the Sabbath.

We went downstairs and out into the marketplace, which was thronged, as ever on Sundays, with market women trying to sell us eggs and cheese, bread and fowl, and beggars holding out the grimy effigies of sundry saints for us to kiss. The crowd thinned beyond the church of Maria del Pilar. Eglofstein was in the best of spirits.

"All's well," he announced, slapping the side of his boot with his riding crop as he went. "Things are better, in fact, than I expected. Saracho has the patience and stupidity of a sheep. He hasn't budged — he's lying low and waiting for the signals. Well, he'll continue to wait for as long as I please."

He chuckled softly to himself.

"The house in the Calle de los Carmelitas is being closely guarded," he said, more to himself than to me. "That man Salignac knows his business. He stands guard there, peering at all who approach like the Devil sifting souls. If His Lordship the Marquis of Bolibar wishes to sneak inside and kindle his mouldy straw, he'll have to transform himself into a mouse or a sparrow."

"The Marquis of Bolibar is dead," I broke in, "as I already told you."

Eglofstein paused and turned to stare at me.

"Jochberg," he said, "I credit you with more intelligence than most. How in God's name did you contrive to get drunk so early in the day?"

"The Marquis of Bolibar is dead," I repeated, stung by his imputation, "and you yourself had him shot. We must have been blind not to recognize him at once on Christmas Eve."

"You seriously expect me to believe," cried Eglofstein, "that that filthy Beelzebub of a muleteer, the one that stole Kümmel's thalers, was a cousin of the King of Spain?"

"Yes, Captain, he was. He lies buried beneath the snow, and his dog still roams near the guard post and leaps up at me whenever I approach."

Eglofstein paused again and knit his brow.

"Jochberg," he said, "I know that it has always been a favourite pastime of yours to arouse my ire by contradicting me. You always know better than the rest. If someone says 'sweet', you say 'sour'. If I were to say 'sparrow', you would say 'finch'."

He relapsed into sullen silence, and we walked on side by side for a while.

"I interrupted you, Captain," I said at length, hoping to placate him. "You were about to tell me your plans."

"Ah yes, my plans," he said, and his face brightened in an instant. "Well, as you know, we're expecting a consignment of powder, shot and shell. Our stock of ammunition has been depleted by these latest engagements — severely depleted, Jochberg — but the convoy has already passed the village of Zarayzago and will be here three or four days hence."

"Unless Saracho . . ."I began.

We had come to the "Blood of Christ" inn. Standing outside its door in the wintry sunlight, dripping with melted snow, was a carved wooden figure of St Antony, a saint much revered in Spain and more often invoked there than all twelve Apostles put together. Eglofstein paused with his hand on the latch and turned to me.

"The Tanner's Tub?" he said. "He'll have to let the convoy pass, for he mustn't make a move before the Marquis of Bolibar signals to him by kindling that straw. I myself shall give the said signal in three or four days' time. Once the convoy is safe within these walls, I shall lure Saracho and his men out of their holes as village boys lure crickets, and that'll be the end of the guerrillas in this part of the world."

He flung open the door and shouted into the tap-room.

"Brockendorf! Günther! Are you coming? You know the colonel: keep him waiting for his dinner and he'll confine you to quarters."

Brockendorf and Günther emerged red in the face, one with wine, the other with a gambler's excitement. Günther was cock-a-hoop, Brockendorf as phlegmatic as he always was when not actually drunk.

"Well," said Eglofstein, "which of you won the other's boots? What did you play, 'Thirty-One'?"

"We played 'Lansquenet'," Günther replied, "and I won."

St Antony was holding a slip of paper in his hand, a printed announcement to the effect that Mary had been truly immaculate when she conceived Our Lord. Günther, having removed this, gave him the knave of diamonds to hold instead, and the saint, as forbearing and longsuffering in effigy as he had been in his lifetime, retained the playing card between his fingers.

"Günther," Brockendorf said in his measured way, "at Barcelona, where some felons were marched to work past my billet each morning, I once saw a card-sharper whose face bore a strong resemblance to yours."

"And I," Günther retorted hotly, "saw a thief dangling from a gibbet in Kassel whose nose was as flat as your own."

"Sometimes," said Eglofstein, quite straight-faced, "Nature indulges in the strangest whims."

The four of us set off together.

"He had the king of spades in his hand," Günther pursued, as hotly as ever. "He played it, thinking himself sure to win, and said 'Take that!' And so it went on, thrust and parry, queen of hearts, knave of hearts, back and forth. In the end I played the ace of hearts, called 'Trounced!', and he was beaten."

He turned to Brockendorf and bellowed the word exultantly in his face.

"Trounced, Brockendorf, did you hear? Trounced!"

"Be first with her by all means," Brockendorf growled as he strode along. "She'll notice soon enough that you're not the man for her. Your slow-match peters out too soon, my lad."

Eglofstein looked at the pair of them and whistled softly to himself.

"What did you play for?"

"For the right to be first with Monjita," Brockendorf replied.

"I thought as much," said Eglofstein, chuckling.

"Brockendorf met her in the street this morning," Günther announced. "She made an assignation with him for tomorrow, after Mass, but he lacks the necessary
belair
- he would have choked the well for the rest of us. Now I shall go in his place. I know how the women hereabouts should be courted in Spanish."

Eglofstein turned to Brockendorf, his eyes alight with curiosity.

"Is it true you spoke with her?"

"Yes, and at some length," said Brockendorf, smiting himself on the chest.

"What did you say to her?"

"I told her point-blank that I was in love with her, and that she alone could help me in my hour of need."

"And she? What was her answer?"

"She could not converse with me in the street, she said, because that would be thought unseemly in La Bisbal, but I was to call on her tomorrow after Mass. She had pins and lye in plenty at home."

"Pins and lye?"

"Yes, I had vowed to eat pins and drink lye for love of her."

"Tomorrow, when the colonel has gone riding," said Günther, "I shall pay her a visit."

"Do that!" Brockendorf gave a thunderous laugh. "Go by all means. Swallow the pins and lye yourself!"

"Günther," said Eglofstein, "you and Brockendorf may fancy yourselves the only players in this game, but have a care: I, too, hold some trumps in my hand."

"But the lead is still mine," Günther drawled spitefully. The pair of them, Eglofstein and Günther, eyed one another with the cold and hostile air of duellists preparing to settle matters at dawn.

By now we had reached the colonel's residence. Outside the door we saw Captain de Salignac furiously engaged in driving away a number of beggars who, it being Sunday, had gathered at the Marquis of Bolibar's house to get their customary dole of soup and peas cooked in oil.

"What are you doing here, you rogues, you scoundrels, you drunken wine-bibbers?" Salignac roared at them. "Be off with you! I'll let none of you past this door!"

"Alms, sir!" the beggars cried in a ragged chorus. "Alms, if you yourself hope to receive God's mercy! Have pity on the poor! Glory to God on high! Feed the hungry!"

"You see?" said one of the wretches, thrusting his mutilated arm in Salignac's face. "Like you, I have been afflicted with a divine misfortune."

Salignac retreated a step and called out the guard. At once, two dragoons emerged from the doorway and put the beggars to flight with a shower of blows. Even as he ran, one of the fugitives turned and called over his shoulder.

"I know you, cruel man!" he cried. "Christ has already punished you once for your hardness of heart. You have no more hope of eternal bliss than the beasts of the field!"

The captain watched him go without expression. Then he turned to me.

"Lieutenant Jochberg," he said, "you are the only one of us to have seen the Marquis of Bolibar. Did you recognize him in one of those wastrels? I think it very likely that he will endeavour to steal back into his house in some such disguise."