Song of the Legions

by Michael Large

  They taught me a secret handshake, a certain friendly or brotherly grip, whereby one Mason may know another in the dark as in the light. “May it protect you, Brother,” one of them said, and the ritual was, at long last, concluded.

  This foolishness ended, the Master called the Craft from labour to refreshment. ‘Refreshment’ signified but one thing – vodka. To a man, the Lodge drank, heartily. The brethren gathered around, clapping me on the back, and shaking my hand.

  “Here, boy, drink this!” cried Bishop Massalski, producing a great foaming tankard of mead, in which something living was thrashing, “This will sort the apprentices from the craftsmen!” He leered at me with hungry eyes. I stared back.

  “Bishop Massalski,” I said coldly, “I have not seen you since the Third of May last year. Sto lat!” The priest stared at me with horror. He recognised me, at last, for I had been incognito beneath the hood.

  “By God!” he hissed, “if I had known it was you, you young scoundrel, I should have blackballed you!”

  I stared at him with contempt. “Blackballed me? You don't have any balls, you turncoat bastard.”

  The tankard contained a live frog, swimming in beer. A sea of expectant faces surrounded me. Without hesitation, I drank the beer in one gulp, feeling the frog's slimy legs kicking against my face. Raising the tankard to universal acclaim, I seized the front of Massalski's vestments, and tipped the frog down it. A great drunken cheer rose up as the priest ran crazily around the room, with the poor frog hopping and squirming inside his clothes. As the crowd parted to make way for the Bishop, who was jumping and cursing like the devil, I perceived the closing formalities of the day, as they closed the Lodge.

  “Worshipful Master,” called out a Mason, “Present the flag of our country at the Altar.”

  With that, they draped the Russian flag across the Altar. Some of the Brethren cheered – some were silent – some cried out, in anguish.

  “In the Name of God Almighty!” I shouted, “This is not the flag of our nation! This is the yellow shield of Judas! This is the black beast of the Anti-Christ herself! But what more could I expect from a nest of Targowica vipers?”

  Rzewuski roared with anger. “Beware your conduct, Brother! You violate the sanctity of the Lodge! Szymon – silence him!”

  There was an uproar. The brethren were bitterly divided, for and against. Words were exchanged, and then blows. Tankards were thrown and fists flew. Amidst the chaos, the tall, blond man, with piercing blue eyes, came striding towards me across the Mosaic floor like an angry God. Sweeping off his hat, he bowed graciously in greeting. Without further ado, Szymon drew his sabre and made to run me through. I turned the blade aside with my chisel, wielding it like a poniard, for my blood was up, and I was glad of any excuse to kill one of these Targowica traitors. Roaring like a bull, I ran in to meet him, stabbing at him with the chisel like a dagger.

  “Brothers!” came a vain shout, “the Lodge is holy ground! Put down your weapons!”

  But we were not to be denied. Like dogs off the leash, we howled for vengeance, leaping at each other’s throats, scattering the candles across the floor. My adversary executed an advance-lunge at my heart. I deflected this with a beat-parry, but Szymon Korczak was too canny for this, and our blades were too ill-matched – with a simple whip-over he disarmed me, the chisel spinning away into the darkness.

  My adversary grinned. Flames were running up the banners and the wooden panels of the walls. Masons ran to and fro, screaming for water. Above the Altar hung the ceremonial sword. Unsportingly, Szymon had interposed himself between me and it.

  Slowly and deliberately, Szymon prepared his coup de grace. He could not resist using the classic cavalryman’s cut, the slow, deliberate, par le moulinet. It was his way of saying that he was cutting me down like a peasant.

  This act of vanity gave me my chance. I ducked, and rolled under the flashing sabre, past Szymon and towards the Altar. Then I sprang up onto the Altar and wrenched the sword from the wall. My opponent, enraged, turned and ran in a mad charge, sweeping his blade at my ankles, to cut off my legs!

  Leaping over the wild swing, I landed on the floor, my nightshirt flapping wildly, my bare backside gleaming in the light. I scrambled to my feet barely in time to receive My Lord Brother Szymon Korczak at full tilt, whereupon I dealt him a good cut to the body. My heart sang for joy. Oh, the cruel beauty which runs through all our souls, as it runs through the world! Squealing like a stuck pig, Szymon turned back and fell sprawling across the Altar. His blood spilled across the white altar cloth and his sabre clattered onto the floor. I made no move to finish him off. That would have been ungentlemanly.

  By now, the Brethren and their servants had quelled the fires with buckets of water and snow. A thick, damp, acrid stink enveloped the chamber. A dozen Masons drew their sabres and levelled them at me, crying that I had killed him.

  “Tis but a flesh wound, brothers,” I said, sadly, and with great regret. “Fear not, Szymon Korczak will live to draw another treacherous breath.”

  From up high on his throne, Felix began to laugh, and then to cackle. We were all trapped in the hell of this little satan.

  “Damn it, Blumer, that was good sport!” Felix said, applauding wildly, as at the theatre, and wiping vodka from his thin lips. “You’ve bested both Rzewuski, and now his finest sabre, Szymon Korczak! The door is always open to you, my lad!”

  As I was led from the chamber, I paused and smiled with satisfaction. "Gentlemen,” I said to the Masons, “I see that our flag is restored to the altar!”

  The altar cloth was white above, and red with blood below!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE BISON, NEW YEAR 1793

  Felix Potocki celebrated the New Year by firing off ten brace of cannon. God knows, our poor country had little enough to celebrate. We had lost a third of our land and our populace to Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the Satanic Trinity. The Constitution was torn up. Our army was all but disbanded. Many of the regiments were taken into the hands of the Russians, or of kroliks such as Felix Potocki, to act as their own rent-collectors and jockeys.

  Felix would not permit Szymon Korczak and I to kill each other like civilised men. Having declined to fight Pepi on the field of honour, he could not allow duels in his fiefdom, for fear of appearing a coward himself. Instead, my squadron was given unto Severyn Rzewuski's disposal, and he did all that he could to place us fellows in harm’s way, by giving us dangerous and evil tasks.

  That night, we huddled at the rail for midnight mass in the draughty Potocki chapel, making hurried confessions. “Bless me father for I have sinned. The day before yesterday we built gallows. Yesterday my men evicted serfs from land they had worked for generations. We dragged children from their hearth and homes, threw families to the wolves, extorted taxes from honest farmers, all in the name of Felix Potocki.”

  We trudged into the gathering dark of a Polish land under a foreign boot. Austrian, Russian, Prussian, it mattered not. After a hunter's breakfast of scrambled eggs we set off, freezing, at the crack of dawn, snow blowing in our faces, to hunt the deadly minotaurs that plagued Potocki's estates – bison!

  Tanski was confident, hefting his lance with great bravado, twirling it like a choirmaster's baton, to great gasps from his adoring female admirers. The lads seemed to have warmed to the novelty of exile. Sierawski had filled out. No longer a gawky scarecrow, he had become a young adonis. His long hair shone. His skin was weatherbronzed. A veteran of the War of the Constitution, he rode with his czapka at a jaunty angle, with swooning girls grabbing at his saddle.

  Myself, I was bereft of all soul and vitality. I sank into a bottomless melancholy. Not even the sweet wine of our fine Podolian girls, with their ebony hair and white skin, could rouse my mind from the black dog of lethargy. I was insensible to the charms of the girls. They took my ill-tempered brooding for the despair of a sensitive and tortured soul, and were greatly enamoured of me. Had I but cared, I could have cut a swathe thr
ough them as a scythe at the harvest. The more I spurned them, the more they coveted my glances. Such are women!

  “Forget him, girls, all he cares for is bison-grass vodka!” Tanski said, waving his czapka on the end of his lance. We rode off into the forest. The snow was luminous in the darkness. Fire danced on the torches of the hunters.

  “Cheer up, damn it, Blumer, you miserable hairy bastard!” Sierawski shouted, “we’re better off here than in Siberia!”

  Laughing, Tanski and Sierawski rode off. A shout came – the beast had been cornered. Cursing, I spurred Muszka mercilessly on, and gave the old warhorse his head. I should rather die than be last into any affair. Truth be told, at that moment I should have welcomed death, such was the depth of my despair.

  Nearby there was a fusillade of shots, darts and arrows, that shook the very snow from the branches of the fir pines. The hunters and the hounds had caught up to the bison. They had drawn the beast round and round a great towering oak tree, with ancient spreading branches, like the arms of an old gnarled giant. As I drew nearer, hearing the cries and whoops of the hunters, the crack of shots and broken branches, I saw red stains of blood on the snow.

  Between the three of us fellows we cornered the great beast in an open clearing ringed by pine trees. Tanski was playing the great bison and teasing it until it dropped from its wounds. Darts and arrows stood out on the bison's great mane like broken crosses. Tanski raised his lance for the coup de grace – but missed. The spearhead sunk impotently into the snow, and the shaft shivered apart.

  So Sierawski drew his pistol and pulled the trigger. A flash in the pan, a hiss – misfire! At that moment the great beast, wounded, angry, and blinded with rage, turned on Sierawski, goring his horse and unseating him. The bison stood over his prone, crumpled body. I spurred my horse between Sierawski and the bison.

  The beast turned, finally, on me. My horse, God Bless him, stood his ground as a ton of bison-flesh bearing those wicked devil’s horn points came charging at us. My breath running in ragged gasps, I shouldered my lance, and struck home. The bison swerved, barrelling down a hollow and careening away. I had but winged it. The broken lance hung from the bison's ribs, another bloody trophy.

  As Muszka and I collected ourselves, blood and noise ringing in our eardrums, I saw, with mounting horror, the bison, mortally wounded but still bellowing, running down on a crowd of spectators who had gathered at the foot of the hill. At the centre of this small knot of horse riders was a lady, all in white.

  Cursing, I spurred my horse after the bison, and with my free hand I drew my gun from my saddle holster. With scant yards to go, I drew a bead on the dying beast as it bore down on the damsel and a young man who stood, immobile, rooted to the spot. Placing my musket to my shoulder, I fired.

  With a titanic gasp, the great beast expired at the lady's feet. Beside her the young man had drawn his sword, and brandished it impotently. Muszka slid to a halt. The branch of a tree had claimed my czapka. So I touched my fingers to the top of my bare head and bowed, full length, from the saddle, smoking musket in hand.

  The lady, her eyes colder than the icy snows, colder than the diamond earrings she wore, regarded me with the most wicked dancing eyes I had ever seen, and placed her dainty foot on the bloody head of the bison. It was Madame L. Beside her was Elias Tremo, her young lover.

  “There you are, Blumer, at last,” she said coldly. “It has taken weeks to find you. Here, this letter is for you.” She extended her hand imperiously and gave me the paper. Stunned, I took it from her. It bore the seal of the Republic. I broke open the wax. I should have been less astonished had the letter been delivered by Mercury himself, in his winged sandals. Flakes of snow drifted onto the white paper and blotted the words into inky tears.

  “Blumer, Take Your Men to Krakow At Once.

  Dabrowski.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE UPRISING, KRAKOW, 24 MARCH 1794

  “Home at last!” Sierawski cried, waving his czapka in the air.

  We saw two towers rising through the morning mist above the market place. These two square towers, of uneven height, like father and son, were crowned with domes, like onions. We rode on through the arches that ringed the market place, with the chimes of our horses' hooves ringing out on the flagstones. Our lances pointed at the heavens like a line of dragon’s teeth.

  “Your fame precedes you, comrade,” I remarked. Sierawski beamed and doffed his czapka to the girls as they leaned out of the windows, scattering rose petals and blowing kisses at the soldiers. In his mad vanity, he fancied that their attentions were for him alone.

  Word swept through the cities and towns, through every household, church and coffee house, through the fields and the forests. It flowed up and down the Vistula and the Varta with the spring tide, and climbed the peaks of the Carpathians – Uprising!

  Krakow was buzzing like a beehive, with armed men of all descriptions converging upon it from every point of the compass – nobles armed with sabres and pistols, peasants wielding scythes, and veterans such as ourselves, in the tattered uniforms of the Republic. I ordered my troop to halt at a water trough. The horses sucked greedily at the water. Then, suddenly, the air was filled with strange music. A sad, silvery, plaintive clarion call from the cathedral tower, six simple notes that echoed hauntingly away into the blue. Then, abruptly, in the middle of a bar, the music stopped.

  Tanski stood in his stirrups. “What the Devil?”

  “Why, it is our Krakowian Hymn, the Hejnal,” Sierawski, who as you know was a Krakowian, said proudly. “Five hundred years ago, the Mongols invaded old Poland. The Golden Horde flung themselves at the walls of Krakow – a hundred thousand warriors!”

  Sierawski pointed to the higher of the two towers.

  “A minstrel in that tower of the cathedral sounded the

  alarm. His trumpet called the city to arms. Battle was joined around the walls. An arrow from a Mongol bow cut short his signal and his life, but the barbarians were repulsed, and the city saved! Ever after, every single day, morning and evening, the same melody rings out over the city. It stops at the point where the herald died.”

  Tanski snorted with derision.

  “Of course I have heard the story, but you have it all wrong, Sierawski. It was not the Mongol hordes, merely a small raiding party of Tartars that attacked this town of yours.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, “it was the Turks, not the Tartars.”

  “All of them tried!” retorted Sierawski, “and we men of Krakow beat the lot!”

  Thus we fell to bickering as earnestly and bitterly as any faculty of scholars of history.

  “Harsh sounds the bloody trumpet of war!” Cyprian Godebski cried out delightedly, tossing back a glass of wine. We had met him on the way there.

  “It's a fine story, all the same, comrades. No matter who they were, be they Turks, Mongols, Tartars, Cossacks, or Russians, here we are in fair Krakow, with the barbarians at the gates again! The stage is set for a grand encore of the same old song.”

  All around us the swarm of activity increased. Thick-waisted men of commerce, the keepers of inns and taverns, had run out to meet us, like flies after honey. They were rubbing their hands in sheer joy at the sight of thousands of thirsty soldiers, dreaming of the prices they could gouge and the profits they could make. Liquor doubled in price in the time it took to drink it.

  A bristle-bearded fellow pressed a glass of wine into my hand. This avaricious fellow was going to be disappointed, for we had not a single zloty in our pockets between the whole brigade. Nevertheless, I drank it at a draught in any event, and made to tear a brass button from my tunic in token of payment.

  “No charge, my lord,” simpered this great toad. My lord, indeed – still, a man could get used to leading a brigade.

  “On the house! God Bless you, my dear innkeeper,” Sierawski grinned, “you are an honest patriot indeed, for this wine is of an excellent vintage.”

  “On the house in Krakow,” I mused,
“the Devil it is! Who paid for this, man?”

  The innkeeper shrugged, shook his head and jerked a thumb towards a fashionable terrace lined with silk parasols. “His Excellency, yonder.”

  Now my mouth was dry and I could taste only the dregs of wine in it. For your nobles will only give away a sprat if they expect to catch a mackerel.

  The square teemed with people. We made our way through the thickening crowd, drawing admiring glances from the women and envious stares from the men. Ignoring them, and brushing aside the protests of the waiters, we strode onto the terrace of the coffee house. It was a fancy place, with gleaming walnut tables swathed in white linen cloths, and red velvet cushions on the gilded chairs.