The Lightstep

by John Dickinson

Even as he said it, the sound of a cannon shot rang out across the town. Maria started.

  'That was from the east wall!' she gasped.

  'Yes. They have found something to fire at, whatever it may be. I fear our time has run out.'

  He looked gloomily at the remains of his meal, which had lain untouched on his plate for the last quarter-hour.

  'Well. I can no longer be of use here. Matters must now reside in the hands of the Commander. I do not envy him his task.'

  'You are resigning?'

  'I am leaving. I believe I am the last shred of reason in this city. Now I must yield it to the romantics and return to my Prince. Perhaps I may still be of service at his side.'

  'But – if the enemy are east of the city, the roads must be cut!'

  The enemy! What had happened to the army?

  'The roads, but not I think the river. They will have to work fast to have a boom across it before tomorrow. I have an oared barge ready at the quays and will be gone tonight. I wonder . . .'

  He looked at her.

  'Perhaps, since you say you have not taken the step that some might suppose . . . Perhaps you should come with me.'

  'I . . . thank you, sir. But I had thought you intended me to stay – at least until I have been able to speak with Colonel Wéry?'

  'Since you have made it plain that you do not wish to sway him from his course, I see no advantage in you staying, and every advantage, to you especially, if you leave at once.'

  'May I ask if it is my reputation that concerns you, or my safety?'

  'Both, of course. And my own reputation too. I would not be known as the man who abandoned you to the perils of a siege.'

  'But my reputation is already lost, sir. And as to my safety – who is to say whether it is indeed more dangerous to stay than to go?'

  She almost said to go with you.

  'Come, it is not so bad. You have remained – what? Two nights in the city? It is awkward, I grant you, but I can vouch . . . no?

  You would not want me to do even that? I see. Then is it useless also for me to beg you to consider your own safety. I am sure you realize that if indeed things go as we expect, birth will be no barrier to the most cruel suffering. Come, my dear. This must be your very last chance. It would be a terrible tragedy if you were lost.'

  'Sir, if you would have pity on a potential victim of the siege, you will find as many in the streets as your barge will bear.'

  'So. Again you refuse. Very well. Very well.'

  He leaned back, joined his hands at the fingertips and looked at the ceiling.

  'I consult my conscience,' he said.

  'Your – conscience, sir?'

  'I do have one. Does it surprise you? But I only consult it when it suits me to do so.'

  Her eyes flew round the room. He had four – five footmen standing in the shadows. Her nearest help was Pirenne, waiting for her in another wing of the palace. And after that Michel and the men of his garrison – all fixed on the coming enemy. Blessed Saints! Did he mean to capture her and carry her back to her mother by force?

  'Very well,' said Gianovi again. He sighed, and drew a letter from his breast pocket.

  'I must, of course, respect your choice. Therefore, since I am sure you will be seeing him, I beg you to deliver this letter to Colonel Wéry for me. He knows what is in it. As the city is now under siege, he is to have responsibility for all the matters to do with the governing of the city that have hitherto fallen to me. If you would do this, it would ease me greatly, since at least I will not have to abandon one of my fellows to hunt for him while I make my escape down the river.'

  She took the paper from the table and held it in her fingers.

  'You may be sure I will deliver it,' she murmured.

  'There is no need for you to take it to him now,' Gianovi said. 'He will be out somewhere, on the Saxon or Bamberg gates as likely as not. In any case he will not be expecting it before tomorrow. He can shift for himself until then.'

  With a nod, he allowed her to rise, and he rose with her. They bowed and curtseyed to one another.

  'This has been a most interesting evening,' he said.

  In the courtyard she paused. The air was cold and the sky clear to the stars. She drew a long breath to drive the wine and the talk from her brain. The chill bit into her throat and blew out again in a cloud of frost. She stood and listened for a long while. There was no more sound of cannon, near or far. Abruptly she turned away from her quarters and made her way out to the stable block. The single duty groom gawped at her in the light of his lantern. It must have been nearly midnight.

  'I wish you to saddle my horse again,' she said. 'And send someone for Lieutenant Bottrop. I am going down to the east wall.'

  XXXIV

  The East Wall

  Wéry looked down from the bastion upon chaos. The road into the city was crowded with shapes and shadows. Carts inched forwards, blocked in the crowd. Voices called in the darkness,' Get on! Get on!' Other voices wailed or cried out in pain. In the tiny pools of light by the Saxon Gate he could see that men were cramming themselves forward in an effort to push past a wagon that was at a standstill under the very arch. The wagon was not moving. The press of bodies around it was making it impossible. Voices, hoarse with yelling, bellowed for men to keep still or to move out of the way. No one heeded them.

  'Ho there,' called Wéry down into the crowd. 'What unit is that? What unit?' But his voice lost itself in the struggling mass and he heard no answer.

  Beside him the bastion commander, a short man in a huge cocked hat, was craning over the parapet.

  'There's French among them!' he gasped. 'I'm sure of it!'

  Panic was in his voice. It was panic that was breathed out by the crowd below them. Every man down there, at the end of their terrible march from the battlefield, was seized with the fear that in an instant they would be snuffed out. Their comrades around them, wounded, exhausted, were nothing but obstacles. They pressed unthinking for the last yards to the safety of the gate. The gates were jammed back by the crowd. There was no possibility of closing them until the blockage freed. If there were indeed a strong force of French mingled in the mass, the gate might be lost in minutes.

  'We must fire, sir. We must disperse them.'

  'Don't be a fool,' snapped Wéry. 'Do not fire. Do not fire.' He strode to the top of the inner steps and bellowed down again.

  'Ho there! What unit?'

  Some hero had got the wagon moving. It sidled forward a few yards into the city: a big rattling shadow among other shadows that eddied forward in a rush as the way was freed.

  'What unit is that?'

  A voice from the cart, strained and pained, answered, 'Second company, the Fapps.'

  The Fapps battalion – or a fragment of it. What of the rest?

  What in God's name had happened up there on the banks of the Vater?

  'Officer to the bastion to report, please.'

  When nothing seemed to respond to his cry, he bellowed again, 'Up and report, damn you!' He could feel his own voice going hoarse with the strain of shouting. But something was happening down there now. They seemed to be lifting something – a man, in the cart. He heard a gasp of pain. Then another voice, faint in the tumult, said, 'No, no. He is wounded. Put him down.'

  It was a woman's voice. He thought he knew it.

  'You go,' he heard her say. 'Don't be afraid. I will come with you.'

  'Commander!' called a voice from across the bastion.

  'Wait!' he snapped.

  People were climbing the steps to the bastion. Pale uniforms glowed in the lamplight. Bottrop appeared, leading a young, bewildered soldier with his arm in a sling. Behind him, biting her lip as she picked her way up the last few steps, came Maria von Adelsheim. God's teeth, what was she doing here? At this hour?

  Here where the enemy might appear without warning, and death might take any of them in a moment?

  'Their officer is wounded,' she said. 'This man will tell you what has
happened.'

  The bastion commander appeared at his side again.

  'Report,' he said importantly to the soldier. The man came dazedly to attention.

  'Second company, the Fapps?' said Wéry.

  'Yes, sir. Wounded detail.'

  'What happened up there?'

  'Don't know, sir. They caught us up on the march and said the position was overrun, and the enemy cavalry were after us . . .'

  'Stop. Who caught you up?'

  'The other fellows, sir. The Erzbergers. In a mob they were, no officers . . .'

  'Stop again. You were sent back from the lines, as part of a wounded detail?'

  'Yes, sir. After the first attack. Captain Herz and the badly wounded in the carts, the rest of us walking. And . . .'

  'And then some men from the Erzberg battalion caught you up and told you they had been overrun and the enemy were in pursuit with cavalry?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'When was that?'

  'Around an hour ago, sir.'

  'Did you see the enemy?'

  'We heard horses, sir. But it was dark.'

  Dark. It had been dark for hours, and these men had been marching, running, riding, dazed and wounded, all the way. What chance of a sensible report from any of them?

  'Right. Well done. And you are safe. Now what we need you to do is get yourself to the hospital – what is it? Sabre-cut?'

  'Don't know, sir. After we cleared them out of the position I found I couldn't use it. That's all.'

  'Get yourself to a hospital. They'll see you right. The nearest one's at the Saint Cyprian church. Know it?'

  'No, sir.'

  Wéry turned to the bastion commander.

  'Spare a man to take him there, would you?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'And there are men of the Erzberg battalion in the crowd. Bring at least one of them to me.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  The woman was still standing there, watching them.

  'You have blood on your dress,' he said.

  'It was his – the officer's. I think his wound broke open as they tried to lift him down.'

  'Please – you should not be here.'

  It was agonizing to see her standing there, when shots might break out at any moment.

  'I know. I have a message for you from the Governor.' She held out a paper. 'He has left the city. You are now to take over his responsibilities.'

  He nodded dully. Gianovi was gone. Well, at least that simplified some things.

  'What has happened?' she asked.

  'I do not really know. The army was attacked in their positions. They must have held against the first assault, if they were able to organize a wagon train for their wounded. But there must have been a second attack, and at least one of the battalions has broken.'

  At least one. And if the Erzberg battalion had gone, that would be a third of the position. What chance for the rest of them, after that had happened?

  'We heard cannon fire in the citadel.'

  'That was the Bamberg gate. They saw – or heard, rather – cavalry somewhere out in the fields. The cavalry rode off. We do not know where they have gone . . .'

  'Commander!' said a voice behind him urgently.

  'Yes, what is it?' he snarled.

  It was another militia officer. One of the guildsmen, he thought.

  'We think we have finished the barricades, Commander. What are your orders?'

  Mercy of saints! We think we have finished the barricades . . . 'I will come and inspect. If they are satisfactory, the next thing . . . Have you prepared fire-buckets in your quarter?'

  'Fire-buckets, Commander?'

  Damn it – had these people never heard of incendiary shells?

  'Earth, sand, water – whatever you can find. And twice as many as you think you will need. And we need earth and dung on the cobbles to damp shot as it falls. I will come . . .' He looked around.

  He could not leave the bastion, not yet. The men were leaderless. He had sent their officer to find him someone to interrogate. At any moment they might take it into their heads to shut the gates on the fugitives or start firing at imaginary Frenchmen. And they were all looking at him – the gun crews with their implements in hand, faces blank in the darkness, all turned towards him. Tomorrow, or the day after, iron shot would be hurtling in to smash those men to pieces as they worked here. They were looking at him, waiting for him to speak.

  The lamplight was on Maria's face. She was biting her lip, still. He saw her shiver. He saw her breath frosting on the air. She had come without a coat, or even a shawl.

  He unbuttoned his own greatcoat and peeled it from his back. He handed it to her.

  'You must wear this,' he said. 'If you are staying.'

  To the guildsman he said, 'I will come as soon as I can.'

  The late February dawn found them both still on the wall. The gates were closed now. Since the arrival of the train of wounded the inflow of fugitives had dropped away to single men or small groups, many arriving on horses that must have been stolen from wagons. There were more of the Fapps battalion, some Erzbergers, and a handful of the dragoons. All those they questioned confessed that their units had been broken. There was no word of the Dürwald battalion, or of the hussars, or any of the artillery. No one knew what had happened to Count Balcke. No officer above the rank of captain reached the city.

  But the grey light showed them masses of cavalry, circling the city beyond gunshot of the walls. Wéry counted at least six squadrons of light horse, and three more that might have been dragoons, accompanied by a battery of horse guns. Their presence put all thought of a sortie beyond question. His nervous militias would never stand in square against such a force. Balcke-Horneswerden, and the main body of the retreat (if there was one) would have to fend for themselves.

  He found himself looking at Maria in the first light. Her hair was tousled and her eyes marked with lack of sleep. She looked like a walking tent with his greatcoat draped around her. The beauty had fallen from her – gone altogether, except, perhaps, for the line of her jaw as her chin lifted and she listened to what was said.

  Hey, Michel – have you ever looked at somebody? Have you tried to see their past, their hopes, their fears, all written on their face?

  That was the real person, he said to himself. Take away the grooming and the training, and now you see her as she really is. Her past he knew well, and her hopes for freedom. Her future, he dared not guess.

  And supposing he could paint, as Maximilian painted, then this would be the face that would look out from his canvas. How might it change in death?

  He could not bear to think of it.

  But the idea was infectious. He found himself glancing again and again at her, to reassure himself that she was still alive. He cursed himself for his weakness and looked away. But immediately he had to look back again at her, to be sure that she was there.

  He tried to replace her with someone else. He looked at the men around him and let his mind play its death-games with their faces instead. There was a round headed, crimson-cheeked militia officer, with a hairy wart growing by the side of his nose, and another on his chin. So what was his past? What were his hopes and fears? He was a country gentleman from Zerbach. His hopes: probably to go back to being a country gentleman as soon as possible and to have another try at persuading his obstinate peasants to raise that clover crop, which would make so much difference to their lives. His fears: smoke, and a line of charging Frenchmen, and his men melting away around him as he stood there. His future: short.

  Or the sombre-looking Master in the Guild of Crossbowmen. Or the thin-faced official from the mayor's chambers, whom Wéry had imagined would desert his post at once, and somehow was still here. Somehow they were all here, every one of them wrenched from their lives into a world that was utterly changed. The same tired expressions were stamped on all of them. They had even begun to defend him, as he had seen Fernhausen and Bergesrode defend the Prince from petitioners.

 
; But still the petitions came. Here before him were two more faces, two nuns from the Convent of Saint Cecilia, whose Mother Superior had sent to know in what way they could assist. (Dear God, what would happen to them when the French broke in?)

  'Clear your largest rooms for a hospital,' he said. 'And make as many bandages . . .'

  'Oh, but Commander! The Mother Superior says it is impossible to admit men to the convent buildings!'

  'They will be wounded, and doctors and orderlies only. I am sure that if she understands the situation . . .'

  'She will not agree to this, Commander.'

  Dear God! thought Wéry again. He felt very tired.

  'Say to her that I most earnestly request it . . .'

  'No,' said another voice. 'Do not say that.'

  Beyond the two nuns, a figure loomed out of the twilight – a familiar shape, in a black priest's robe. It looked just like Bergesrode. But surely that was a trick of the light. That would be because the thought of Bergesrode had flitted across his mind only a few moments before . . .

  It was Bergesrode. It was that face, that unforgettable face, with the dark brows slanting down and the dark patches below his eyes slanting up like the remains of an ashen cross. It was a man who only weeks ago had been one of the most powerful in Erzberg. He looked at the two nuns with eyes of stone.

  'Say to the Mother Superior that when men are wounded we are not commanded to pass on the other side of the road. And also say to her that if she is too stupid to understand even that, I shall come and explain it to her myself.'

  'Thank you,' sighed Wéry, as the two nuns fled.

  'She is a fool, that one,' said Bergesrode.

  'What are you doing here?'

  'After I left my post, I returned to the cathedral. When the Chapter left the city, I volunteered to remain. So now I have charge of the cathedral, and of the cathedral troops. I came to tell you that we are at your disposal.'

  'Thank you,' said Wéry again.

  The 'cathedral troops' he supposed, would be the ragged band of beggars and clerks, clanking with pikes and relics, that the priests had been organizing over the last week. Of course they would expect to provide the defence of the cathedral. And he had already assigned it to . . .