The Marquis of Bolibar

by Leo Perutz

  I did my best to seem calm, but my hands were trembling with excitement. The lips of the man beside me shaped a silent prayer.

  A shot rang out quite close at hand. We all flinched as if we had never heard a musket fired before, but Salignac rode on with scarcely a turn of the head, a white plume of snow streaming out behind him.

  He vanished into a small copse of chestnut trees, only to reappear within seconds.

  Another shot rang out, and another, and a third. Salignac sat his saddle like a rock. A man darted out from behind a hedge and tried to seize his reins. He drew back his arm, felled him with a sabre-stroke, and sped straight on like a steeplechaser. He looked neither right nor left, seemingly blind to what was going on around him.

  By now the entire countryside was in turmoil. Guerrillas were clambering out of their trenches and horsemen converging on Salignac from all sides, yelling as they galloped at full stretch. A crisp rattle of musketry made itself heard, and puffs of blue powder-smoke rose into the air. Salignac rode straight through the tumult, standing in his stirrups and brandishing his sabre. He was almost at the bridge. Then I saw them, by heaven: there were men on the bridge, six or eight of them — no nine! No, ten or more! Couldn't he see them? He was on top of them now. One of them levelled a musket, Salignac's charger reared - he was done for! But no, he soared over their heads and across the bridge, leaving two of them sprawled in the roadway.

  It was a spectacle so awesome, so heart-stopping, that I forgot to breathe. Only when the immediate danger was past did I become aware that I had seized Thiele's hand in my excitement and was gripping it convulsively. I let go of it. Salignac was now on the farther bank, whose wooded slopes gave promise of safety, but a moment later — someone beside me cried out in alarm - a band of horsemen burst from the trees and cut the courier off. Was he blind? "Veer left!" I shouted, though I knew he could not hear me. "Veer left!" Then they were on him. His horse fell and I could see him no longer, merely a confusion of heads, horses' manes, whirling blades, musket barrels, upraised arms - a surging, rearing, plunging mass of struggling human forms. Nothing could save Salignac now: his ride was at an end.

  I heard a faint whistle, a sound familiar to me from a score of engagements, and ducked. Thiele, who was standing in front of me, sank silently to his knees and toppled over backwards. A stray bullet had found its mark.

  "Thiele!" I cried. "Comrade! Are you wounded?"

  "I'm done for," the corporal groaned, putting a hand to his chest.

  I bent over him and tore his tunic open. Blood was welling from the wound.

  I took Thiele by the shoulder, sat him up, and groped for a cloth to serve as a bandage. The others ignored my cries for help. One of them gripped my arm.

  "Look, Lieutenant!" he shouted. "Look!"

  The mêlée on the farther bank had broken up. Wounded horses were rolling on the ground, men crying quarter and fleeing with their hands in the air. And out of that chaos, still brandishing his sabre, rode Salignac. He was alive and unscathed! Erect in the saddle, he soared over trenches, mounds of snow, men, bushes, earthworks, gabions, shattered gun- carriages, smouldering camp-fires.

  I heard laboured breathing beside me and turned to look. Corporal Thiele had propped himself on his hands and was staring after Salignac with glazed eyes.

  "Don't you know him now?" he groaned. "I do. That man will never stop a bullet. The four elements have made a pact: fire will not burn him, nor water drown him, nor air desert his lungs, nor earth crush his limbs ..."

  The others jubilant cries drowned his mutterings. The breath rattled in his throat, and his shirt and tunic were red with blood.

  "He's through! He's safe!" the dragoons shouted exultantly. They hurled their shakos high in the air, brandished their carbines and cheered.

  "Pray for his sinful soul," were Thiele's last, halting words. "Pray - pray for the Wandering Jew. He cannot die ..."

  INSURRECTION

  I had sent one of my dragoons on ahead to bring the colonel immediate word of the course and outcome of Salignac's mission. When I myself entered the orderly-room an hour later, the only person I found there was Captain Castel-Borckenstein, who had come to collect his company's latest orders and was on the point of leaving.

  He lingered in the doorway for a moment to ask how matters had gone, and I gave him a brief account of what had happened. I was still speaking when Eglofstein emerged from the adjoining room. Quietly closing the door behind him, he went to the window and beckoned me over.

  "I'm at my wits' end," he whispered with an anxious glance at the door. "Nothing will induce him to leave the man's bedside. He clings there like a limpet."

  "Whom do you mean?" I asked, puzzled.

  "The colonel, of course. Günther is delirious — he has been raving about Françoise-Marie."

  Eglofstein's whispered words stabbed me to the heart - rang in my ears like a tocsin. Günther might well betray himself and us in his feverish condition, I could see that danger but had no idea how to avert it. We stared at each other helplessly, both thinking of the colonel's jealousy, his violent temper, his bouts of malicious fury.

  "If he learns the truth," said Eglofstein, "God help us and the regiment at large. He'll forget all about the danger of the moment, our desperate predicament, the guerrillas, the beleaguered town — he'll forget everything save how to avenge himself on all of us as bloodily as possible."

  "Has Günther mentioned her name?"

  "No, not yet. He's sleeping now, thank God, but earlier he spoke of her incessantly. He scolded her, he petted her, he chided and cajoled her, and the colonel stood there waiting for him to say her name as eagerly as Satan gloating over a lost soul." Eglofstein caught me by the arm. "Where are you going, Jochberg? Stay here, you'll wake him!"

  Heedless of Eglofstein's warning, I tiptoed into Lieutenant von Günther's sick-room.

  Günther was lying in bed, not asleep but muttering and laughing softly to himself. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes as sunken as a pair of empty walnut shells. The surgeon, who was going the rounds of the hospital, had sent one of his assistants, a beardless youth incompetent to do more than refresh the moist cloths on the wounded man's brow.

  The colonel was standing at the head of the bed. He looked up as I came in, clearly displeased by my intrusion. I went over to him and reported what he already knew: that his courier had safely crossed the enemy lines an hour before. He listened without taking his eyes off Günther's lips.

  "General d'Hilliers will have the letter in his hands in sixteen hours' time," he murmured. "If all goes well we should hear his vanguard's musket-fire three days from now, Jochberg, wouldn't you say? Fourteen leagues, and the roads are built of decent stone."

  "Dearest one!" cried Günther, his emaciated hands groping for the woman of his feverish dreams. "Your skin is wonderfully white — white as birch bark ..."

  The colonel's mouth twitched. He bent over Günther and gazed at him as if trying to wrest the name from his lips by main force, yet he already knew full well, as I did, whose skin was as white as birch bark.

  "Other women," said Günther, chuckling delightedly to himself, "— other women swallow wax, chalk, powdered snail shells and frogs' legs. They smear their faces with a hundred ointments, but to no avail. Their skin is for ever blotched and blistered, poor creatures, whereas yours ..."

  "Go on, go on!" the colonel burst out. I stood there dismayed and despairing, certain that the name would be uttered at any moment. Disaster seemed imminent, but Günther's fever continued to play a mischievous game of cat and mouse with the colonel's jealousy and my fear.

  "Be off with you!" he cried, tossing and turning on the bed. "Go away, she doesn't care to see you. What are you doing here, Brockendorf? Your threadbare breeches are as transparent as my sweetheart's lace handkerchief. That comes of sitting too long in taverns, believe me. How's the wine at the 'Pelican' and the 'Blackamoor'? Surgeon? God have mercy on you, Surgeon! What have you done to me?"

&
nbsp; His voice became hoarse and the breath issued from his throat in little gasps, and all the while his hands shook with fever.

  "Surgeon!" he called again, and groaned aloud. "You'll end on the gibbet some day, mark my words. I can read men's faces like a book."

  He sank back exhausted and lay there motionless with his eyes closed, breathing stertorously.

  "Foetida vomit," said the surgeon's assistant, and dipped a cloth in cold water. "He talks a deal of nonsense."

  "Is the end near?" asked the colonel, and I could tell how frantic with fear he was lest Günther should die without uttering his beloved's name.

  "Ultima linea rerum," the assistant said carelessly as he laid the damp cloth on Günther's brow. "Human aid can avail him little now."

  My presence seemed to have slipped the colonel's mind entirely, for he gave every appearance of noticing me again for the first time.

  "You may go, Jochberg," he said with a nod. "Leave me alone with him."

  I hesitated, reluctant to do as he asked. I was still debating what excuse to give for not budging when I heard footsteps and loud voices in the next room. Then the door opened and Eglofstein came in. Behind him I saw a lanky fellow whom I recognized as a corporal of the Hessian Regiment.

  "Softly, softly!" hissed the colonel, indicating the wounded man. "What is it, Eglofstein?" "Colonel, this fellow belongs to Lieutenant Lohwasser's company, which is presently patrolling the streets of the town."

  "Yes, yes, I know the man. Well, Corporal, what is it?"

  "They're banding together and rioting, sir!" the man announced, all out of breath. "The townsfolk are attacking our sentries and patrols!"

  I threw Eglofstein an admiring glance, quite convinced that he had cunningly rehearsed the corporal in this story as a plausible means of weaning the colonel from Günther's bedside, but the colonel merely laughed and shook his head.

  "So they've risen in revolt, have they, those pious Christians? Who sent you, Corporal?"

  "Lieutenant Lohwasser himself, sir."

  "I thought as much." The colonel turned to us and chuckled. "Lohwasser is a scatterbrain — he's for ever imagining things. Tomorrow he'll doubtless report having seen three fiery serpents or Sanctornus the hunchbacked goblin."

  At that moment, however, we heard a thunder of footsteps outside. The door was flung open and Lieutenant Donop rushed in.

  "Insurrection!" he cried, flushed and breathless from running. "They've attacked our pickets in the marketplace!"

  The colonel stopped laughing and turned as white as chalk. The ensuing hush was broken by Günther, now so delirious that he could no longer tell night from day.

  "Light the lamp, damn you!" he babbled. "Are you trying to play blind-man's-buff with me, or what?"

  "Have the Spaniards gone mad?" the colonel exclaimed. "Fancy attacking our pickets! Hundreds of their countrymen have perished on the gallows for less. What can have possessed them?"

  "Brockendorf—" Donop began, then hesitated.

  "What of Brockendorf? Where is he?"

  "Still in the church."

  "In the church? Hell's teeth, is this the moment to hear a sermon? Does he mean to pray for a good wine-harvest while the Spaniards are rioting in the streets?" "Brockendorf and his company have taken up their quarters in the church of Nuestra Señora."

  "Quarters ... in the church!" Purple with rage, the colonel opened and shut his mouth like a stranded fish. He seemed about to choke or fall to the ground in an apoplectic fit.

  "I'm dying, God help me," Günther groaned, tossing and turning on the bed. "A thousand good nights, my dearest..."

  "He says," Donop ventured, "— that's to say, Colonel, Brockendorf claims that you yourself gave the order."

  "That I gave the order?" fumed the colonel. "So that's it. Now I understand why the Spaniards are in revolt."

  He controlled himself with an effort and turned to the corporal.

  "You there, double away and fetch me Captain Brockendorf. And you, Donop, summon the priest and the alcalde. Quickly! Why are you still standing there? Eglofstein!"

  "Colonel?"

  "Those cannon at the crossroads, are they loaded?"

  "With case-shot, Colonel. Shall I —"

  "Don't open fire unless I order it. Two troops of cavalry will clear the streets."

  "With live ammunition?"

  "With the butts of their carbines!" the colonel snapped. "I told you: not a shot is to be fired without a direct order from me. Do you want to bring the guerrillas down on our heads?"

  "Understood, Colonel."

  "Double all pickets. Take ten men, occupy the prefecture and arrest the members of the junta as soon as they assemble. Jochberg?"

  "Colonel?"

  "Find Captain Castel-Borckenstein. He and his company are to take post in the courtyard behind the guard-house. Not a shot unless I order it, do you understand?"

  "Yes, Colonel."

  "Then God go with you."

  Half a minute later we were all on the way to our appointment with destiny.

  I hurried along the Calle de los Carmelitas with Eglofstein and his men. In the distance, beyond the convent's blackened ruins, we glimpsed the fleeing forms of two Spaniards armed with pitchforks. Our ways parted at the end of the street. Eglofstein was eager to be off, but I, struck by a sudden thought, caught hold of his hands.

  "Captain," I said hurriedly, "everything has turned out as the Marquis of Bolibar intended."

  "It seems you were right after all, Jochberg," he replied, and made to go.

  "Listen," I said. "Günther gave the first signal, that I know for sure. We ourselves — you and I and Brockendorf and Donop — gave the second, and the revolt was provoked by Brockendorf alone. Where, in God's name, is that knife?"

  "What knife do you mean, Jochberg?"

  "On Christmas Eve, when you had the Marquis shot, you took possession of the knife Saracho gave him — a dagger with an ivory hilt portraying the Virgin and Christ's corpse, don't you remember? It's the last of the three signals. Where did you put that dagger, Captain? I cannot rest while I know you have it."

  "The knife," Eglofstein repeated, knitting his brow, "— the dagger . . . Ah yes, the colonel saw me with it and begged it from me for the sake of its fine workmanship. I no longer have it."

  My heart leapt at this news.

  "All's well, then," I said. "If what you say is true, I'm content. The colonel will never give the third signal, of that I'm certain."

  "No indeed, not he," Eglofstein replied with a hollow laugh that failed to disguise his latent guilt and remorse.

  On that note we parted and went our separate ways.

  THE BLUE BUTTERCUP

  I reached Castel-Borckenstein's quarters with ease, for the insurrection was then in its early stages. My return journey was twice as difficult and dangerous, and I soon regretted not having taken a few of Castel-Borckenstein's men with me for protection. Angry rioters were surging through the streets and a hundred furious voices cursing us for a pack of unbelievers whose sole intention was to profane the Christian religion and desecrate its places of worship. Indeed, we were even accused of planning to carry children off to Algiers, there to sell them into slavery. It being customary to paint the Devil in pitch, the priests had spread the blackest lies about us, and the hate-filled mob believed them all, no matter how brazenly false and nonsensical.

  Remembering that the colonel had been left alone with Günther, I quickened my pace and, heedless of the pandemonium in the streets, took the shortest way back. I was accosted in the Calle de los Arcades by an old man who warned me to go no further because the end of the street was held by thirty armed Spaniards. This did not alarm me overmuch. In a pinch I could use my pistols to make them see reason, whereas they, whose fire-arms we had confiscated on the morrow of our arrival, had nothing but cudgels, scythes and bread-knives. As I continued on my way, however, a stone whizzed past my head and a woman at a window called out that we were enemies of the Holy T
rinity and spurners of the Mother of God, and that Germany was a land inhabited by fire-breathing heretics who merited extinction. Having decided in the end to avoid the main thoroughfare in favour of byways and vegetable gardens, I reached the Calle de los Carmelitas somewhat belated but unscathed.

  A half-squadron of dragoons was drawn up outside the colonel's headquarters, awaiting his order to go into action against the insurgents. The priest and the alcalde were just descending the steps under escort, and I learned that they had been instructed to see to it that the rioters laid down their arms and went home within half an hour. On the expiration of that time, any armed civilian encountered in the streets would be summarily shot by the dragoons.

  Both men, the priest and the alcalde, looked dismayed and dejected, and seemed far from confident that they would succeed in their mission. Behind them came Brockendorf, the luckless author of the present imbroglio. Since the trio and their escort took up the entire width of the steps, I could not but overhear the heated words that passed between them.

  "Our church," the priest exclaimed, "has been ransacked from end to end. All the holy pictures have been stolen."

  "That's a lie - a damnable, double-dyed lie!" Brockendorf retorted angrily. "I carried them into the sacristy with my own hands."

  "Your men have tethered their horses to the saints' arms," wailed the alcalde. "Horse dung covers the floor knee-deep and the fonts have been converted into mangers. You've made a stable of the house of God!"

  Brockendorf blandly ignored this accusation.

  "When we hang you," he told the alcalde, "the whole revolt will collapse like a cold syllabub. This town is full of rogues and the gibbets are all untenanted."

  The alcalde shot him a venomous glance. I tried to slip past, but Brockendorf caught me by the arm and gestured at the alcalde as if to convey that he was sorry, the matter was out of his hands.