Wolf Hunt (4 page)

Margont thanked him warmly and mounted the horse that, spooked by the increasingly loud shots of the artillery, snorted and pawed the ground.

The man who had found Wilhelm was called Bergen and he taught in the orphanage where the adolescent had lived. He convinced Luise Mitterburg not to come with them.

She and the two servants followed them only as far as the western bank, using the large bridge, which the pontoniers were shoring up as quickly as possible, while anticipating another tree to destroy it again. As soon as she arrived on the other side of the river, the young Austrian walked rapidly away. She was finally realising what the news she had just been given meant. She was still managing to hold back her grief, but for how much longer? She did not want Margont to see her crying- She disappeared into a crowd of women. Racked with worry, they assailed her with questions but she had no answers for them. 

ELEVEN bodies were laid out by the side of the road linking Vienna to the village of Ebersdorf. In the heat of the sun, their nauseous emanations filled the air. Three men were lacerated, striped with wide gashes - the vehement work of hussars was evident. Some had no apparent wounds and seemed to contemplate the sky with their staring eyes. Almost all were wearing the grey greatcoat with red cuffs of the militia. The French army, finding itself well advanced into enemy territory, wanted to protect its rear, particularly its lines of communication. This meant that certain officers were pitiless with spies, both the civilians who organised ambushes and the soldiers who fought for the enemy.

Bergen indicated Wilhelm. A bullet had struck him in the middle of the chest. His green jacket was stained with dried blood. Margont  noticed the most striking feature last, as if his soul had at first rendered him blind to the ‘detail’. The adolescent had been mutilated. His smile had been extended from ear to ear, with a

knife. He looked as if he were roaring with demonic, absurd, atrocious laughter and this impression was so real and lifelike that it seemed to give the lie to his death. Yet, already the body was decomposing. Margont looked away.

A second lieutenant was standing guard with two sentries. Recognising Bergen, he came to stand opposite Margont’s horse, saluted him and immediately declared: ‘No deal. The remains of partisans and rebels must be left exposed as a deterrent to others!’

With his triangular face and vituperative tone, he looked like a viper who had just been disturbed.

‘Captain Margont, 18th of the Line, Ledru Brigade, Legrand Division. The next of kin wish to recover the body of the boy with the mutilated face.’

‘First they’ll have to walk over mine!’ the second lieutenant retorted at once.

Margont almost felt like doing that. All he would have to do was launch his horse forward ...

Bergen intervened. ‘I am one of the young man’s teachers. I assure

you he never did anyone any harm. He was an orphan! Don’t you think he’s suffered enough in life without having to endure this punishment after death?’

The officer’s eyes widened. ‘You want an orphan? As the war proverb says, “One orphan lost, ten thousand found!” If they listened to me, they would display the body of an enemy in every street in Vienna and a gallows in the square of every conquered village.’

Any entreaty would simply bounce off such an entrenched view. Margont, making an effort to remain polite, asked, ‘Who gave the order? To whom can I go, to—’

The eyes of the second lieutenant blazed. They were persisting in wanting to steal one of his corpses! He was hatching them like eggs.

‘The 18th of the Line has not been charged with ensuring the security of the area! You have no authority on this subject. If we don’t subdue the Austrian civilians now, in two weeks’ time, they will slit open your stomach and piss in it while you sleep!’

He had fought in the Spanish campaign. There the two sides had outbid each other in atrocity. Frenchmen were found burnt alive, scalded, nailed to trees, emasculated, enucleated, dismembered, crucified ... On their side, the French soldiers burnt villages said to be partisan and meted out bloody reprisals ... The officer had returned alive from the Spanish quagmire but his soul and part of his reason had had to stay there, ensnared in a vision of horror.

‘I also fought in Spain,’ Margont told him.

The second lieutenant blinked, stupefied to find himself exposed in this way. His lips moved but his voice did not follow. Margont helped him out.

‘In any case, the body we wish to take away is decomposing. Better that his next of kin bury him now, rather than you having to do it later, in the sun.’

The junior officer stiffened. ‘Of course, obviously.’

‘How was he killed?’

‘He was caught by a patrol two days before the battle, during the night. He must have tried to rejoin the Austrian army with an

accomplice. They were discovered somewhere in the woods near the Danube, not far from Vienna.’

‘Was his companion arrested or killed?’

Regret showed in the face of the second lieutenant. ‘Alas, he managed to escape. The soldiers were too far away, it was night-time ... And it was already pretty good to have caught one of them. The other just had time to fire once before disappearing.’

‘It wasn’t a patrol that was responsible for that boy’s death. Look closely at his jacket: there are burn marks all round his wound. Someone shot him point-blank.’

The officer went at once to examine the body, worried by this discordant fact. Then he stood up, reassured.

‘Well, in my opinion, it was his accomplice who killed him. Either accidentally - he panicked and it was dark - or so that he wouldn’t denounce him if he was captured. Many Austrians left their mothers, wives and children in Vienna, he would have been worried about eventual reprisals—’

‘And the mutilation? How do you explain that?’

The second lieutenant shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was a soldier from one of the detachments whose friend had been killed by the partisans. War drives people mad. As for mutilation of corpses, I’ve seen worse ...’

Margont did not doubt it. The man had become deaf to the horror of war because he had heard its cries of agony for so long. He had become accustomed to ‘all that’. For him, this abomination was no more than an anecdote, a momentary distraction in a dismal day of sentry duty. Although he did not know it, he was as dead as the corpses he guarded. The second lieutenant turned to Bergen. ‘Go ahead, take him. I’ll make an exception for a veteran officer of the Spanish campaign.’

The Austrian nodded. Thank you, Officer. God will reward you.’

‘If your God exists, the settlement of accounts between the good I’ve done and the bad I’ve done will send me straight to hell, even if I were to let you leave with all eleven corpses.’

‘There were only two?’ queried Margont.

‘According to what I was told, yes. But the country is crawling with

vermin. Enemy soldiers skirt round the front to the north or to the south, and cross the Danube in boats or at fords or by the remaining bridges. Then they hide in the forests and harass us. Don't go adventuring for any reason in the countryside without a strong escort, Captain. Otherwise the air you breathe through your nose will leave you through the gash in your throat.’

The second lieutenant spoke animatedly. His eyes, although exhausted, with black rings under them, were always alert. He probably woke every night brutally brandishing a pistol at his phantoms.

He added: ‘But tell me, what did this young Austrian do to be so popular? The day before yesterday two hussars from the 8th Regiment came to ask me about him. They were sent by a lieutenant, one Relmyer. Is he a friend of yours?’

At that name, Bergen’s eyes widened. Having been mournful and resigned, he became extremely talkative. No one could make out his mixture of French and Austrian. He had to repeat himself more calmly. He was so emotional his voice trembled.

‘Did you say Relmyer? I know a Relmyer, I know him very well -Lukas Relmyer. He’s one of my old pupils. We haven’t seen him for years. Did you say a hussar came? An Austrian hussar?’

The second lieutenant raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘Don’t be stupid. If your Relmyer had been an Austrian hussar, I would have shot his two sidekicks on sight!’

‘If this Relmyer sent cavalrymen to find out about Wilhelm, it must be him,’ concluded Bergen to himself.

Bergen and Margont decided to go back and see Luise Mitterburg. Bergen would then try to borrow a wagon in the village of Ebersdorf  to transport Wilhelm’s body back.

On the way, Margont asked: ‘You mentioned murder earlier when you announced the boy was dead. What makes you think it was a crime?’

‘It’s an old story, which concerns only the Austrians. But I don’t think Wilhelm was killed and disfigured by one of your patrols.’ Bergen appeared ill at ease, defensive. The question had upset him so much that he completely changed the subject. ‘Relmyer’s back!

Mademoiselle Mitterburg is going to be so happy!’ he exclaimed. Margont experienced this sentence like a blow to the stomach. ‘Are they ... engaged?’

‘No, Captain. He’s her adoptive brother, as it were.’

Bergen told Luise Mitterburg what had happened. She was overcome by emotion at the news that Relmyer had returned. She questioned Bergen relentlessly. Where was Lukas? How long had he been in Austria? Why had he not come to see her? How dare he serve in the French army? Why the devil had he chosen to join the bellicose, brave but wild hussars? And there were further interrogations that Margont could not even understand because the young woman was talking so fast. Finally she turned to him.

‘I don’t know how to thank you. Or rather I do. Here, take my address. I live with my adoptive family.’

Margont took the paper she held out to him and looked at the awkward handwriting. She had written the lines in pencil, leaning on the palm of her hand.

‘You will always be welcome,’ she added. ‘I have another favour to ask you. I know, it’s becoming a habit. I’m always being told off for it. I think it’s to do with having been abandoned. I have the feeling of having suffered an irreparable injustice and sometimes have a tendency to think that all the world owes me something, that people must help me, me more than anyone else, because I’ve suffered more than normal. Out of compassion. If you were queuing for food you would give up your place to the invalid behind you, wouldn’t you? But in any case, as you have no doubt foreseen, I would like you to go and find Lukas Relmyer for me. It seems he is serving in the 8th Hussars. I want you to tell him that I absolutely must see him. In exchange, I swear to you I will similarly devote myself to helping you if you ask me a favour in return. What’s more, I will ensure that you are invited to parties ... Viennese balls are a unique pleasure! You’re here now anyway, and it will be better than killing each other. That’s not what I meant ... The war, of course, that’s another thing altogether...’

Finally she interrupted her long discourse. She had spoken

without interruption, so keen to stifle Margont’s reservations with a torrent of arguments, that she had lost the thread of what she was saying and tripped herself up.

‘I accept, Mademoiselle. I will go and find Relmyer, as soon as the fighting stops.’

Luise Mitterburg thanked him profusely.

Margont hurried to cross the large bridge before it collapsed again. Was he in love with the Austrian girl, he asked himself. He could not tell. He did not believe in love at first sight; it was too inexplicable, too sudden. Certainly, she had some sort of hold over him. He felt there was a reason for it, but he could not express it clearly. He told himself that once he had succeeded in discovering the secret, the charm would dissipate and he would be free from her influence.

Margont slept for several hours, weakened by loss of blood. The wounded were perishing en masse, for lack of care. Others were still arriving and were laid down between the corpses and the dying. What few surgeons there were continually amputated limbs, which were piled into wagons and transported far from sight. Towards two o’clock, the air was rent by the deafening roar of artillery fire. The soldiers sat up, if they had the strength, narrowing their eyes in the direction of the fighting, trying to guess the cause of the racket. They learned that the Austrians had placed in battery, in the front line of their centre, two hundred cannon - two hundred! — and were firing relentlessly on the troops of General Oudinot, who had barely eighty. Shortly afterwards, the little bridge was repaired once more, but no reinforcements could get through because of the stream of injured and panicked deserters fleeing onto the Isle of Lobau. By the time some order had been restored, the bridge had collapsed again.

Finally, a little after three o’clock, Archduke Charles, short of ammunition and worried about Austrian losses, gave up crushing the French, who were resisting with an energy born of despair. His adversaries were beaten even if they were not annihilated, and he judged the result satisfactory and put a stop to the attacks.

Napoleon therefore immediately ordered that the east bank should be abandoned and his troops fell back onto Lobau and to the west bank. Each army had lost twenty thousand men, killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Napoleon had been vigorously driven back and so had just suffered his first personal military reverse. Intoxicated by the spectacular success of the preceding weeks that had seen the retreat of the enemy army and the fall of Vienna, he had underestimated the fighting spirit of the Austrians. Wanting to act quickly, he had pressed forward too precipitately. The floating missiles had been the unexpected element that had shattered the impetuous advance of the French. Napoleon and his empire had almost been overthrown by some tree trunks, flaming barges and windmills. But the setback was only partial. With only twenty-five thousand combatants on the first day of battle and fifty-five thousand the next, the Emperor had miraculously succeeded in resisting a hundred thousand of the enemy, narrowly escaping total disaster. From then on Napoleon had only one idea in mind — to erase his defeat by pulverising the Austrians.