Wolf Hunt (5 page)

As soon as the news of the French retreat was known, Vienna rang with the peal of bells, sounding strange after the thunder of cannon fire, now finally silenced. Although the capital was still occupied by the French, it manifested its joy.

A grenadier lying near Margont declared: ‘Obviously the bells are tolling for us!’ 

MARGONT still felt tired in spite of a good night’s sleep. His wound had stayed clean and the pain had lessened, becoming less bitingly acute and more of an itch. Jean-Quenin Brémond had prescribed rest, but of course, Margont had been up at dawn because he already had a thousand projects for the day.

The French army, massed on the Isle of Lobau, was licking its wounds. Margont rejoined his regiment and was happy to find that Lefine, Saber and Piquebois had escaped unharmed from the dreadful butchery to be known from now on as ‘the Battle of Essling’ or ‘the Battle of Aspern’. He immediately began the search for the 8th Hussars, accompanied by Lefine.

‘I don’t understand what this is all about!’ grumbled Lefine, his arms crossed like an obstinate child.

Fernand Lefine, although only twenty-five years old, was as devious as a bagful of monkeys. He was furious that Margont had interrupted him right in the middle of his horse-trading. He was

illegally selling horses confiscated from Austrian dragoon prisoners to French troopers. The buyers paid a derisory price so they got a good deal, but it was less good for the seller because of all the intermediaries and accomplices taking cuts; but from little acorns great trees grow. Lefine was also cross that Margont had appropriated one of his beasts. If honest men started robbing the thieves, what would become of the world?

‘I’ve already told you,’ replied Margont.

In fact, Margont had not wanted to admit how attached he had become to the Austrian girl, whom he barely knew. So he had lied about his motivations, pretending that he had offered his help in order to gain access to her glamorous Viennese circle.

The war is going to start again, Fernand,’ he went on. Archduke Charles would have had to attack Lobau immediately after his partial success at Essling in order to defeat Napoleon. With our Emperor, if you don’t crush him completely, and his entire army along with him, he will rise up again to annihilate you. In matters of war Napoleon does not accept happy mediums. But before the

next confrontation, there will be numerous preparations. So well be trapped here for several weeks. Either we pass our time playing cards on this stupid island, or we are regularly invited to Vienna!’ Vienna, Vienna, Vienna! Margont could not stop thinking about that legendary city. Lefine shook his head. ‘You’re not giving me the full story, Captain. I know you. We’re going to get involved in an escapade that doesn’t directly concern us just because of your humanist ideals!’

Having said that, though, Lefine thought his friend might be right. The ruins of Aspern and Essling were still smoking, but already Napoleon had whipped his army into a frenzy of activity. They had started to build a bridge on stilts to provide a better link between Lobau and the west bank; they were setting up batteries everywhere, even on the tiny neighbouring islands; they were clearing the roads to make them passable; they were digging and nailing together bastions, depots for provisions and munitions, a forge, hospitals, barracks ... The French army and its German allies were settling in. So obviously, if there was a way of going off to Vienna to have some fun, rather than labouring in the sun on this ant hill

Margont, impatient as always, led Lefine rapidly into the midst of thousands of soldiers. Many were still asleep, exhausted by two days of combat. They were stretched out in the shade of the trees, their white breeches and dark blue coats almost entirely obscured by the high pale green grasses. The blows of felling axes cracked like feeble gunshot and the noise of saws filled the air like the buzzing of a swarm of bees building a new hive.

The 8th Regiment of Hussars were resting in the cool thickets, after their sustained attack on the Austrians. Margont spied three hussars passing a long-stemmed pipe amongst them.

‘Could you tell me where I can find Lieutenant Relmyer?’

A quartermaster of cavalry caught hold of one of his plaits, twisting it round his finger. His green dolman was spattered with dried blood. ‘What do you want to see our Lieutenant Relmyer for, Captain? If it’s to tell him something, we can pass it on.’

‘I must see him personally.’

‘We’ll make sure we tell him that.’

‘Are you going to tell me where I can find Lieutenant Relmyer or not?’ fumed Margont.

The quartermaster of cavalry puffed out his chest in the manner of a cock dealing with some lesser fowl come to squawk in his poultry yard. This infantry bird was lucky he had an officer’s epaulette, otherwise he would have received a sharp peck.

‘Captain, once when Lieutenant Relmyer was quartermaster, his lieutenant shouted at him for wearing non-regulation uniform. The exchange became heated. Relmyer insulted the lieutenant, who challenged him to a duel, or perhaps it was the other way round, and bam! The lieutenant was floored, and his shoulder run through. Now the poor bugger has a dead arm dangling and he serves in the equipment corps. He counts the wagons ...’

The NCO spoke the last words sadly. For him it was a thousand times better to be a hussar - even a dead one — than a bureaucrat in the commissariat.

Margont looked surprised. ‘Relmyer injured an officer? Surely he was arrested at least?’

‘Captain Lidoine wanted to have him shot, but Major Batichut promoted him to lieutenant in place of the lieutenant Relmyer had floored. Now do you understand why we’re not in a hurry to send you to see him? You never know, he might want to become a captain ...’

Lefine recoiled instinctively. Better to stay well away from duellists. Duellists handed out death like others might hand out accolades. The quartermaster shrugged and indicated the nearby willows. ‘Don’t say we didn’t warn you ... You can’t miss him, he’s practising with his sabre over there.’

Margont went off towards the thicket. Lefine hung back, gazing at the quartermaster’s dolman. He was having a sort of vision. He saw the coagulated blood growing wet, liquefying. The stains glistened in the sun before beginning to run down, tracing wide vertical stripes on the jacket. The quartermaster took a puff of the pipe before frowning as he surveyed Lefine.

‘Well, what are you waiting for? Mid-Lent? You won’t get any

tobacco, however long you hang about!’

Lefine moved off, telling himself that it must be the sun, the heat ... The vision terrified him. This affair smelt of death. Wasn’t there enough of that already with the war?

It was indeed impossible not to notice Relmyer. In shirtsleeves and covered in sweat, he vigorously fought invisible assailants. He lunged, jabbed, parried, sidestepped in order better to attack, feinted ... against a seemingly inexhaustible number of enemies. Or perhaps just one enemy that he was unable to vanquish. Mar-gont was not a great swordsman - he had more or less mastered a few moves. Nevertheless he could tell that Relmyer was extremely gifted.

‘It looks as if Relmyer has a few accounts to settle,’ he murmured to Lefine.

‘In that case, I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of whoever he wants to settle them with.’

‘His adversary must be pretty dreadful to drive him to such rage.’ Relmyer turned in their direction, saluted them with his sabre and

joined them, mopping his brow. His physique was impressive. What age was he? Twenty? His manner, assured without being arrogant, was that of an experienced man. On the other hand, his rosebud mouth, naive expression and slightly infantile features were those of an adolescent. He therefore appeared both older and younger than he actually was.

‘May I ask the reason for your visit, Captain?’ His Austrian accent betrayed his origins.

‘Lieutenant Relmyer? I’m Captain Margont and this is my friend Sergeant Lefine. We have come to inform you that Mademoiselle Luise Mitterburg wishes to see you.’

Relmyer immediately barricaded himself inside his inner fortress, locking up his feelings so that they would not show. ‘Yes, certainly, but later.’

‘Mademoiselle Mitterburg and I met by chance. I helped her search for a certain Wilhelm ...’

The name hit Relmyer like a blow impossible to parry. His face hardened, ageing him brutally, as if his age were more a matter of

his emotions than his years. Suddenly the trilling of the birds seemed to irritate him and Margont thought that he was going to draw his sabre and slice through the poor robin sitting carolling on too low a branch.

‘He’s dead, I know. And disfigured! The two hussars I dispatched to find him described the state he was found in. I wanted to see to it myself but my captain forbade it. He finds me unruly. Unruly! I’m a cavalryman, not a horse!’

He tidied his brown curls and then managed to smile. ‘You’re a captain yourself: perhaps if you were to talk to him, he would let me go and investigate this business ...’

Margont was infuriated. Like Luise Mitterburg, Relmyer had no compunction in soliciting his help. ‘I know nothing about this affair, why would I go—’

Relmyer placed his hands on Margont’s shoulders. ‘Come, Monsieur! I can see you’re a man of compassion! Won’t you help an honest officer in distress?’

His tone might have sounded theatrical had there not been tears

in his eyes. At that moment he could have been taken for a thirteen-year-old boy.

‘Well, perhaps, it depends on ...’ stammered Margont, embarrassed.

Lefine suppressed the desire to hit his friend. If you always looked after other people, you ended up failing to look after yourself - a dangerous defect that he was at no risk of succumbing to. ‘Mademoiselle Mitterburg is my sister, or as good as, and she’s rich,’ added Relmyer. ‘She can lend you money, or give it to you ... She’ll do it without hesitating if I ask her to.’

Now Lefine was interested. If they were to be paid for doing a favour, that put everything in a different light.

‘She’ll get you invited to receptions,’ continued Relmyer.

‘I know, yes ...’ Margont cut in before Relmyer could also promise them the moon.

‘But for pity’s sake, for the love of Christ, you have to make my captain loosen my reins!’

‘Tell me the whole story and I’ll see if I can plead your cause with

your superiors.’

They settled down in the shade of a large oak tree. While Relmyer finished unbuttoning his dolman, he contemplated his lieutenant’s stripes. The silver chevrons contrasted elegantly with the dark green of the cloth. I’m not used to them yet,’ he declared, smiling. ‘I was only recently promoted, following a happy conjunction of circumstances.’

Relmyer leant back against the trunk but could not keep still, constantly trying to find a more comfortable position. ‘I’m hunting a man. He’s probably close by, perhaps in one of these forests ...’

As he said that word, he made a sweeping gesture. There were certainly forests round about. Their dark expanses dotted the countryside.

‘I am Austrian by birth. I was abandoned at the age of one. I don’t know why. Perhaps because my family could not afford to keep me. Or maybe my parents were killed in the war, or carried off by illness ... or possibly I was the cruel result of the adulterous affair of one of my parents. I was placed in the Lesdorf Orphanage, north of Vienna. The children were well cared for there. It was the least that could be done, let me tell you, since several of the orphans had lost their parents in wars against the French, the Italians, the Turks or God knows who else. You were taught good manners, the Bible, patriotism ...’

He laughed sarcastically - he was wearing a French uniform.

‘Not to mention reading and mathematics, especially mathematics for the boys. You see, you have to be a good mathematician if you are going to become an effective gunner: measurement of angles, calculation of the curve of the shot...’

Lefine and Margont were perplexed.

‘Gunner?’ said Margont, astonished.

Relmyer smiled, a bitter, ironic smile. ‘Of course! All these little boys orphaned by war were to be turned into soldiers. Wars are always hungry, so it is convenient that war nourishes war.’

He picked up a stone and threw it in an arc. ‘Bang!’ he joked when it landed. ‘It doesn’t work with everyone. Some marry and go into business or work the land of their new family, others move away,

hoping to change their luck ... but many do become soldiers. I met Luise in the orphanage.’

Margont thought he had remained impassive, but perhaps his expression had changed because Lefine turned towards him as if he had given away his feelings. The sergeant’s face registered enlightenment. He had just discovered the key to the mystery.

‘She was abandoned when she was two years old. It’s terrible! She was barely older than I was. We grew up together. When she was eight, a miracle occurred. The miracle that we all dreamt of. She was adopted. Her new mother was beautiful! Elegant, considerate, smiling ... and her father, although less warm, was also happy, even if he didn’t show it in public. The Mitterburgs are rich Viennese bourgeoisie. They came to Lesdorf because they couldn’t have children of their own. They chose Luise after three visits. The day they took her away, we all clustered round the carriage, in case they wanted a second child ... I’m sorry, I’m boring you with my reminiscences. Anyway, for a long time there were three of us: Luise, Franz and me. Since we didn’t have any family, we made our own. Franz was our little brother, at least he was little in stature - he didn’t know his date of birth. We spent all our time together. After she left, Luise often came to see us. Or she badgered her parents to let us come and visit her. Everything was shattered one day in April 1804. I was fifteen at the time.’

His body grew rigid. His recollections were extremely painful. ‘Franz and I went for a walk in the forest. We were playing at ... I don’t know what at.’

He did remember, in fact, but since then, childish pastimes had exasperated him.

‘We were playing hide-and-seek, not knowing that someone else was playing hide-and-seek with us. I don’t know how long the man had been watching us. A few minutes? An hour? Several days? Several weeks? We often went to the woods. Perhaps he had been spying on us for a long time, having worked out when we had free time. Or perhaps he came across us by accident. If you don’t know the area around Vienna, you won’t know that vast tracts have been cleared to make farmland. But several areas are still forested.