Jimmy suddenly halted. Eyes still fixed on the floor, he lifted a forefinger toward the ceiling. “Verboom’s. We’ll go with Verboom’s trench . . . I’ll reject Philip’s offer, of course,” he said, and with truly regal generosity, elucidating, “which will be a snub, and no mistake. If that comes with word that I’ve also marginalized Verboom, he’ll take it even worse. We’ll begin work as soon as we have all the matériel. Let’s get to it; the sooner we finish with this insane Catalan rabble, the better.”
My dear vile Waltraud has told me to stop—she wants to know about Anfán and Amelis. Fatty Waltraud is concerned: Was I really ready to abandon my nearest and dearest? Was I lying to Jimmy? My answer: No, I wasn’t lying.
Now for something that, on the face of it, will seem incongruous: The highest love is shown by denying that selfsame love. Jimmy was Jimmy—it would have been impossible to lie to him, he’d have picked up on it in a heartbeat. The only way I could hide my feelings from him was simply not to feel them.
If I truly loved them, I was going to have to postpone that love, supplant my feelings. Fleetingly but believably, to be a different person, transfigured. Overlaying one love with another was the only option. And I assure you, it was as difficult, if not more so, than designing my dissembling Attack Trench. Yes, I’ll say it: For a period of forty-eight hours, I surrendered myself. The amount of time needed to dissipate Jimmy’s suspicions. Come the third day, he gave me the gift of a French captain’s uniform.
Everyone knows the old sailors’ saying: A single drop of tar and the whole barrel is corrupt. In the vast Bourbon encampment, I set myself to be that drop. It’s amazing the damage that one man, one single man, can do if he sets his mind to it.
I went around proudly in my new French uniform, from one end of the camp to the other. There are captains and then there are captains, and my uniform was white and brand-new: Longlegs Zuvi, looking fine, teaching the rank and file a thing or two about respect. A captain who looked like something straight out of the salons of Versailles, appearing before the grubby troops, knee-deep in mud, brought low by the yearlong siege. I made a nuisance of myself whenever an opportunity presented itself.
I caught sight of a Navarran recruit with a stupid-looking face. I began lecturing him and, when I had cowed him, led him to the artillery depot. Placing a mallet and a scalpel in his hands, I ordered him to get to work on the cannon vents. This would break them, and they could never be used again, but an order’s an order. In tyrannical armies, soldiers are meek servants. Unlike men in the Coronela, these never questioned their superiors, let alone talked back. I left him to it. He’d be caught and surely hanged for hammering the cannons like that—but by then at least a few cannons would have been put out of action.
Gunpowder is such a precious resource that, usually, you see a guard posted at the store, and nobody is allowed to move it anywhere unless under express orders. But somewhere in a large siege, you’ll always find deposits being moved from one place to another. Should a decent saboteur insert himself in the distribution path, he’ll show his worth, ordering the cannon barrels to be taken to the infantry, and the gunpowder for the rifles to the artillery. My dear vile Waltraud doesn’t understand. Well, yes, if you spend your days boiling cabbages, what would you know about gunpowder? The granulation is different for different weapons—with the wrong powder, the cannonballs shoot all of a foot’s distance, and flintlocks explode, blinding the riflemen. Half a grain of gunpowder is enough to scorch a man’s eye.
It was when I came across an old acquaintance that I really began to enjoy myself: Captain Antoine Bardonenche. It was inevitable that we’d run into each other sooner or later, somewhere in the camp.
“My fine friend, finally, we meet!” he said. “But you’ve been demoted. You were lieutenant colonel under King Charles, and they’ve got you as a captain here.”
“Archduke Charles,” I corrected, fully inhabiting my role as deserter. “Only the rebels call that usurper King.”
“Ah, yes, well, what does it matter?” said Bardonenche, who couldn’t care a pepper about politics. “The point is, we’re both captains now. You must come and dine with me.”
I managed to make some more mischief before the day was out, and when night fell, I didn’t have much choice but to go and join him. It was bittersweet to dine together. The evening concluded over drinks in front of a campfire. The tired blue flames cast a melancholy light on our meeting. The days when we had frolicked around the lakes of Bazoches, alongside Jeanne and her sister, seemed a distant memory.
“Can I admit something to you?” he said, and proceeded with a sentimental nocturnal musing: “I hate this, I hate it all. All these months here, stagnating in this miserable battlefield. Have you ever seen such wretched soldiers? We look like an army of beggars.”
“I always thought you felt at home in war, good or bad.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t war anymore. We’re like wolves, circling around some defenseless prey. There’s neither honor nor dignity in putting these people to the sword.”
Bardonenche had been detailed with protecting the rearguard: whole months escorting supply carts and fighting Miquelets. “Not long ago, near a place called Mataró,” he said, “we set fire to an entire forest and drove out a group we’d cornered in there. How those pines blazed! Crackling like grenades, flames as high as the heavens. I called out to them to give themselves up. I gave them my word, four times, that they wouldn’t be murdered. It was useless.” He paused and then carried on. “When they finally couldn’t take it any longer, they came rushing out. And do you know what? Half of them were human torches. Even so, howling, their flesh on fire, they had only one thought: to come and throw themselves at us, to try and take some of us to the inferno with them. I ran one of them through with my saber. Their captain, I think. Look at this.” He handed me a small leather pouch. “This is what he was carrying. Strange, don’t you think?”
I opened it, finding it full of bullets. A number had flecks of dried blood on them.
“Do you believe in destiny?” he asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Nor do I. But it so happens that there are nineteen bullets there, and I in my time have killed nineteen men, in duels or in battle.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I ran my saber through his chest, right up to the hilt. The look on his face—it had to be seen to be believed. He tried to say something to me with his last breath. I couldn’t make it out.”
“Doubtless he was cursing you.”
Bardonenche turned to look at the fire again. “Yes, most likely.”
“Tiredness” and “Bardonenche” were two words that didn’t usually go together. But he seemed exhausted that night, hugging his knees, Busquets’s pouch held in one hand. Busquets, the Miquelet captain I met during the expedition, the one who was so intent on liberating Mataró. His superstition was that he wouldn’t die until that pouch was full. It seemed Saint Peter had finally opened his gates.
“Why hold on to such a macabre keepsake?” I said, gazing at the pouch as though it were a crystal ball.
“I don’t know,” he said, groaning. “I feel as though it belongs to me now. I’ve tried to get rid of it, but I can’t.”
I smiled incredulously. “Can’t? I’ll take it from you if you like.”
He shook his head once more. “Why could anyone possibly want to carry around a pouch of used bullets?”
“No idea,” I said, sighing. “Perhaps the man wanted his killer to have it. Or perhaps it’s something more sinister.”
“More sinister?”
I tried to put myself in a Miquelet’s shoes. “When the Miquelets find a Frenchman or a Spaniard with a rifle whose flint is Catalan, or a sword with a Catalan coat of arms on the cuff, they execute their prisoner using that same stolen weapon. The owner’s name is sewn onto the pouch—‘Jaume Busquets, capitá.’ If any friends of the dead man were to capture you, they’d make
you swallow the contents. That’s their way.”
The moment I’d spoken, I regretted it. Saying anything cruel to Bardonenche was akin to being nasty to a child, for all that the man was the best swordsman in Europe. Needing to get back to the Guinardó house, I stood up.
“My fine friend,” said Bardonenche, bidding me farewell without getting up, “it’s wonderful you’re serving with us. Do you know what I mean? I’ve thought on more than one occasion, Dear Lord, if this carries on to the bitter end, there’s the chance you’re going to have to kill your Bazoches companion.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “Antoine,” I mused aloud, “it could be that things are a little more complicated than our parents and teachers told us.”
The clearsightedness of his answer, when usually, he was so puerile, took me aback. “That would be very sad,” he said. “Our love for our betters would mean we’ve embraced lies. But as good sons and good students, what choice did we have?” In a funereal tone, he added: “I have no desire to kill you.”
This sent chills through me; perhaps he wasn’t as clueless as he seemed. Our friendship, perhaps, meant he was able to deduce various things. Including the fact that a “rebel” lieutenant colonel, so committed to the defense of his own city, would not so easily switch sides. Perhaps Bardonenche demonstrated the most generous kind of friendship that night: to not betray the traitor.
“Do you believe in premonitions?” he asked me.
“No,” I said.
“I do. If Barcelona doesn’t surrender, and we embark on the full assault, it will be the death of me. I know it.”
Saying this, he turned his gaze back to the fire.
9
The trench was begun on July 11, 1714, in the night.
Jimmy was well stocked on all counts: The first parallel had thirty-five hundred men to dig it, and these received cover from ten infantry battalions and ten companies of grenadiers. Accustomed to war being waged on a shoestring, I couldn’t but envy such fabulous resources.
My French captain’s uniform made it easy for me to infiltrate myself into the trench. No sooner had the digging begun than I hopped in. And how hard they worked! Thousands of spades, in a line over half a mile long, flinging earth forward, toiling as hard as galley slaves.
The furrow went from knee-deep to chest-deep in a small space of time. Thousands of the fajina baskets were being circulated around. These they would line with stones and sand and then place on the front edge of the trench, followed by further reinforcing shovelfuls of earth. I despaired over the Coronela’s inaction—What are you waiting for? I thought. Attack, you ought to have attacked already!
You can usually bank on a counter-assault the first day a trench begins. The men working, and the troops providing covering fire, are very exposed. The most common maneuver consists of an artillery bombardment followed by large numbers of men carrying out a lightning sortie. If they plan properly and have fortune on their side, the besieged troops will overrun the men covering the trench; the parallel is not very deep yet and doesn’t provide much shelter. The idea of this first sortie is to ruin the works, even fill in what’s been dug, then immediately fall back. It doesn’t seem like much, but in war, morale is crucial. The city sends the attacking army a message: “What you’ve done is undone. Come and get us!” The works have to start all over again.
The Bourbons were vulnerable, as is the case on the first day of any siege. But my redesign of Verboom’s trench also meant that they’d be beginning particularly close to the ramparts. An unusually short distance, truly. Only two thousand feet, which was one and a half times the distance a rifle could shoot. My secret hope—which, naturally, I didn’t communicate to Verboom—was that a general as attentive as Don Antonio would notice the works and attack. Everything would play in our favor. With this first parallel so close to the ramparts, our lads would be able to tackle the trench in an instantaneous charge. If they charged quickly, they’d have no losses until arm-to-arm combat began, and then their zeal would surely be far greater than that of the Beast’s French mercenaries or Little Philip’s Spanish recruits.
Jimmy gave the order for drums to be played throughout the night, a standard procedure to drown out the sound of the men at work. A waste of time. Even if the works begin in the middle of the night, several thousand men digging are impossible to hide. The next morning is the worst for the sappers: Following a long night’s work, they’re exhausted, and as the sun comes up, they relax—nothing’s happened yet. That’s when a lightning attack comes from the besieged army.
But on this occasion, the sun was already up, and there was no sign of any activity on the city walls. Why didn’t the Barcelonans attack, why? I broke down inside: Don’t you see? I said to myself. Sweet Jesus, attack! And then I experienced the most atrocious feeling, one I’d never wish on another living soul. “My God,” I said, “maybe you designed it too well, Martí!”
Of course Don Antonio was planning a lightning attack on the trench the moment it began—which I, not being inside the city, naturally had no way of knowing. So what was going on? The Red Pelts—for a change—had stuck their oars in. Don Antonio spent the night of the twelfth preparing the sortie, and the very first thing on the thirteenth, he sent word to his wife up on Mount Montjuic that he would come to her at nine in the morning and they would later take lunch together. The letter was dictated publicly, so that at eight in the morning the whole city knew that, instead of attacking, General Villarroel was going to spend the entire day dining sumptuously. A truly Homeric snub to the enemy! “They begin their trench? In that case, I shall fill my belly. See how little I care for what they do or do not do!”
Even my dear vile Waltraud can tell that the letter was meant to throw the Bourbon spies off the scent. As we know, there were more spies swarming around the city at that time than flies on a donkey’s behind. At nine in the morning, Don Antonio did indeed go up to Montjuic surrounded by a large and visible escort. But his plan was to slip back at eleven, a long while before anyone in the Mediterranean would ever sit down to lunch, and then lead the attack.
Among the ministers, Casanova had been beside himself since the moment he’d received word that the Bourbons had begun their trench. Coming across one of our infantry generals, he lost his temper. “Seeing as you’re going to Villarroel’s little party in Montjuic,” he cried, “you can tell him that the people won’t take it all well, not at all well, that the enemy is being allowed to go about its work so freely!”
This general, of course, passed the message on. Appalled at the dressing-down he’d been given, he made out that the conseller en cap’s words had been even more injurious. There was nothing Don Antonio could do but defer the attack to go and conciliate the ministers. Not satisfied with having ruined the ploy, Casanova hardly calmed down even when he was made to understand what the plan had been. To top it off, he held forth on what he thought the approach should be for the sortie. I still think that no one in besieged Barcelona quite understood to what point a military man like Don Antonio had his patience tested. There were a hundred more darts on the part of Casanova, not one of which is worth recounting.
As Casanova and Don Antonio argued, I was huddled in the first parallel, sheltering as best I could from the cannonade raining down from our parsley-chewing artillery chief, Francesc Costa.
Costa, ever his own man, hadn’t waited for any orders to begin firing. Before the sun was up, he’d relocated eight mortars and forty-eight cannons, which then began hurling cannonballs and grapeshot down on the first parallel and my poor head.
If artillery were an art, that dawn bombardment would go down as immortal. The missiles curved perfectly through the air. Smoke trails marked their flight. Some of the shells weighed over a hundred pounds. They flattened everything and raised immense fountains of earth wherever they fell, fajinas in pieces, wicker baskets ejected like cutlery.
Costa’s Mallorcans alternated stone shells with fused explosive ones—when the latter were two o
r three meters above the ground, they’d burst open in a flash of white and yellow, spilling red-hot shards onto the heads of everyone in the trench. It was no easy thing to make the fuse exactly the correct length so that it would blow just as it came over the trench, not a moment sooner; too high and the grapeshot wouldn’t cause as much damage, too late—once the shell had landed—and the ground would absorb the explosion. If you’re facing someone with Costa’s skills, the only hope is to dig your trench deep and not too wide, thereby reducing the lethal area. But if you remember, I had convinced Verboom to do the opposite, with very wide and shallow trenches.
As you know, though, I wasn’t with our artillery but behind the Bourbon lines. Which twist of fate meant I was on the receiving end of Costa’s artistic talents, the cannonballs whooshing and exploding above me. I remember the smell of the warm, wet earth in the trenches, and its still-to-be-braced walls. All around me—crammed beneath and on top of me—dozens of workers were sheltering, as I was, cowering and whimpering in fear of the aerial detonations. The sheer chaos of an Attack Trench means that any survivor has an extreme tale to tell. It is a three-dimensional fight for your life: on the ground, using your hands, in the air, with the bombs; and under the ground, with the mines. Add to that a fourth: You are fighting against time. The advance of a trench is the world’s most quantifiable truth. Even so, that’s the case only in terms of le Mystère or from the perspective of a Ten Points. To the engineer on the side of the besieging army, the advance will always seem to go at a snail’s pace; to the one inside the city, faster than a running deer. An Attack Trench is both the most precise human endeavor and that which must take place under the most savage conditions.
Finally, after midday, several thousand men sprang from the city—my neighbors—ready for anything. I peeked over the parapet and saw the bones of the stockade thickening with people on their way to attack the recently begun trench.
Victus Page 49
