“Hermann!” Dabrowski bellowed, good naturedly, when he saw my prisoner. Dabrowski was a huge man. He towered over the Prussian Colonel and wrapped him a friendly bear hug with his massive arms. To our consternation they began to converse in German. They talked a good while. Dabrowski pointed, with exaggerated concern, at the Colonel’s pathetic scratches, and the Colonel mimed musket shots, and they laughed, and clapped each other on the back. They were evidently old chums.
Dabrowski’s dragoons took our other prisoners from us and we slumped onto our backsides in a corner of the yard, amongst the straw and trestles and upturned barrels. The place was flush with so many prisoners, no one took much notice of our small haul. It was like bringing grain to Grodno. We drank water to sluice the smoke from our parched throats and broke out the cards for a hand of whist.
After some time Dabrowski ambled over. He was in high spirits. Dabrowski was always a good provider for his men and there were canteens of vodka and knapsacks of bread and cheese for us. Disconcertingly, he called the Prussian Colonel over to join us. By now the Colonel’s wounds (such as they were) had been dressed. His head had been ostentatiously swathed in yards of pristine white bandages, so that he had the appearance of a Turk in a turban.
“Colonel Von Boyen and I studied together at the cavalry school in Dresden,” Dabrowski explained. We squirmed uneasily in our seats, with our unwanted Prussian guest, as if a spider sat among us. I cut the cards. We began to play a hand.
“Where are your famous Warsaw girls?” the Prussian asked Dabrowski.
“Hiding in the cellars from your ugly German face!” Dabrowski roared, good-naturedly. The Prussian Colonel laughed and poured himself a vodka. He coughed violently.
“I’d better get used to this vodka,” he sneered, “I expect to be here awhile.”
“Why? What happened to General Goetz’s regiment, my dear Hermann?” Dabrowski asked
“Put to their heels, Henryk!” Hermann – the Prussian Colonel – laughed, and began to gobble every crumb of bread, sausage and cheese that he could lay his hands on, his bandaged head bobbing up and down.
“You don’t seem too concerned,” Dabrowski said gently.
“They’ll be back soon enough, my dear Henryk. The Kaiser has ten regiments to the west to reinforce us. Your health, Sirs!” he raised his vodka in a mocking toast. “After the war,” he said slyly, “there will be good commissions in the Kaiser’s army. Plenty of marks. Die Gelt. Think on it.”
Dabrowski slapped his cards down heavily. The table overturned. Hermann jumped.
“Do not mock us, Hermann. We are not traitors. The Good Lord may have dealt us a poor hand in this game,” Dabrowski said, “but we’ll take no cards from the bottom of the deck, and we’ll play it out to the bitter end.”
We all looked at him with deep respect.
“You have won, General,” I said. Dabrowski had won the hand, and he gathered in his spoils. Abruptly, Elias Tremo came hurtling into the courtyard, on an exhausted horse lathered with sweat. He and Godebski exchanged a sullen stare, but no words passed. Tremo vaulted from his horse and spoke in hushed tones to Dabrowski. Our game broke up and we left the Prussian Colonel to play with a few of his fellow prisoners.
“Blumer,” Dabrowski took me aside, “A message from Madame. Take your three comrades and go to her. She has need of you.”
“At once, General,” I saluted. I confess I was uneasy, because in truth I should never have gone with Godebski to Wola in the first place. If her message contained any reprimand, Dabrowski did not mention it.
“Wait a moment,” Dabrowski beamed craftily, “be sure to tell Madame the dispositions of the enemy forces. General Goetz has five Prussian regiments to the north. The King of Prussia has ten regiments to the west, with six batteries of cannon. To the south, the Russians under General Fersen have thirteen regiments, and five batteries. We await Suvarov’s army from the east. That intelligence may be useful.”
“How the hell do you know that...?” I asked, nonplussed. Dabrowski was a crafty old fox. He grinned.
“Hermann Von Boyen is easy to flatter, and he has a big mouth. He told me everything. Remember that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, lad!” he said, clapping me on my shoulder, and sending us on our way.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE OFFICERS’ WIVES, AND MADAME’S FURY
“That German had a point, though,” Sierawski mused, as our cart rumbled over the cobbles, “where are all the girls?”
We had commandeered an apple-cart and a mule that was too old and stringy to be turned into mule-steaks, from Dabrowski’s field kitchen and on this we made our way east from Wola. To the west, the Prussian guns had started up their fiendish music again.
“Warsaw’s women are hiding in the cellars, and in the attics, praying for the siege to end,” said Godebski, glumly.
“Well thank God for that,” said Tanski, who was riding his glorious grey horse, a few yards ahead. “I’d be mortified to be seen in this company, you look like a bunch of beggars.”
I stretched myself out in the straw on the back of the cart. I had found a bruised apple in one corner and I ate it. I thought of the plump girl who sold apples on the Third of May, whose hair smelled of cinnamon, and who danced the mazurka sweetly. I wondered idly if this was her cart, where she was, if she lived. I gazed up into the afternoon sky, glowing like a vault of amethyst. The white crescent of Twardowski’s moon was faintly visible, a ghostly white scar amongst the blue.
“If you want women,” I said, “a good few of them now seem to be hiding in Madame L’s villa, which is playing host to the senior army officers’ wives and sweethearts.”
Suddenly the boys were all ears.
“Indeed! I should know, I’ve been there for two months.” I bragged. “It’s the greatest billet in Warsaw. Madame’s house is a veritable boudoir, a seraglio, a harem. There are mistresses, courtesans, paramours and princesses, blondes, brunettes, redheads and ravens. It’s a stable of thoroughbred mares and fillies!”
“Ridiculous!” Godeski cut me off. “You’ll find nothing in that house but ungrateful old harridans.”
“Aha!” Tanski and Sierawski laughed, “So the Captain remains unlucky in love!”
Godebski rounded on me angrily and drew back his fist to punch me on the nose. I sat, helpless with laughter, in the bed of the cart.
“God blast you, Blumer! You told these two swines!”
“I’m sorry, Captain, I confess,” I admitted.
“Forget about Madame L, Captain!” Sierawski dragged him off, “what about Madame Z? That’s the lady I want to know about!”
For the lady who aroused their most ardent interest was General Zayonczek's wife, Mrs Aleksandra Zayonczek.
“Comrades,” I told them, “I have quizzed Madame L’s parlour maid, who is an intimate of mine (although a gentleman does not say how intimate, of course) at great length on this subject. I have also had the opportunity to observe the lay of the land, and the two most prominent fortifications, at first hand.”
I made an hourglass shape in the air and Sierawski whistled appreciatively.
“You lucky bugger. I’ve been in a mineshaft for three months smelling the farts and sweat of a dozen hairy-arsed engineers!” he wailed.
“While the Jacobin General is away at the front,” I continued, “his fine lady fights her own tireless war with an implacable enemy – she fights to preserve her youth and beauty against the ravages of time. It is a battle that, in defiance of the laws of nature, she is winning. Her skin is the skin of a twenty year-old maiden.”
“What, is she a witch?” Tanski snapped, cynically.
“An enchantress, my dear Tanski, not a witch! She preserves her body with the cold, as a butcher preserves the choicest cuts of meat. She will never so much as taste a morsel of a hot dish. She eats only raw vegetables and fruits. She drinks only milk. Each morning, she plunges stark naked into an ice bath of freezing cold water.”
&nbs
p; “I could do with some cold water right now,” Sierawski muttered, tugging at his collar.
“She sleeps in an unheated room, always stark naked, with pots of ice under the bed, and will not even light candles in order to preserve her beautiful complexion. At bedtime, she sews herself up in roe-deer's leather for the night.”
“She must be a bloody vampire!” Cyprian whispered, rapt, as he smoked his pipe.
“Well she can drink my blood anytime, Captain. So, each and every day, after her ice bath, she takes a half-mile walk at daybreak. During this cursed siege I have often served as her bodyguard, on these constitutional walks, within the city walls.”
“Do you speak to her?” Sierawski said, his voice hoarse.
“Oh yes. One day we were walking down New World Street. My soul quakes at the memory. There were six inches of white snow on the ground, that crunched under her high-heeled leather boots. Crystals of ice gathered like diamonds in her lustrous hair. Her breath iced up as it passed between her coral red lips. She was wearing only the thinnest of Paris silk gowns, delicate as a butterfly’s wing, and I could see the goosebumps rising on her snow-white skin. She drew close, so close I could smell the rosewater in her hair, and I said to her...”
“Yes? What did you say?”
My comrades gathered around, eyes wide, mouths agog, hanging on every word.
“I said... it’s a bit bloody cold out today, love!”
“Lying bastard!”
The boys pelted me with rotten apple cores as the cart rolled into Madame L’s courtyard. With a great shock, we saw three ladies there, and we scrambled to our feet, reddening with embarrassment, and trying to gain some semblance of a respectable appearance.
Of course the first was a tall pale lady dressed in a flimsy silk gown – Madame Z herself, who else! In all of our many meetings she had not, of course, said more than two words to me. She considered me no more than a guard dog, and should have lavished more conversation and concern on me had I been such.
The second lady was the equally formidable Madame Dabrowski, dressed in sable furs. I had never met her before, in spite of all my idle boasts to my comrades.
But most terrifying of all, was the third. She was armed with a cavalry pistol thrust through her belt. It was the stern, unsmiling figure of Madame L, the fatal lady, Captain Godebski’s inamorata, and Elias Tremo’s mistress. She was also, I realised with a start, my commanding officer, and I was returning from twenty-four hours absence without leave.
Madame L turned her medusa's glare on me. After I had passed on Dabrowski’s message, she upbraided me for deserting my post, failing to follow orders, and for taking the bombs without permission, and so on. I stood, rooted to the spot, reddening. Her words stung like a knout.
It is hard to take such rebukes from a woman, as they are generally right in what they say, and one feels guilty. With a man it is easy, for he is generally wrong, and there is no shame in being hectored at by a fool. You may as well resent the wind blowing up your coat, or become angered by the windy farts of a horse.
“Indiscipline will be your downfall, Blumer,” the lady concluded, “and your adventure at Wola was the kind of foolhardy enterprise that can only be justified by success. Next time you will not be so lucky.”
Then she smiled. “Still, it was well done, boys,” she admitted. “Come inside. I have work for you.”
Inside, all was in uproar. A massive fire was burning in the grate. Great bundles of secret papers, roughly torn, were curling and blackening into thick ash. Soldiers, lackeys, and ladies came in and out, collecting muskets, swords and pistols, that would disappear into cellars and attics. Madame L swept through all of this pandemonium without a backward glance.
“What the Devil is going on? You are preparing to retreat!” Godebski spluttered, “but the siege was raised this very day, my dear lady! Rejoice! We have won!”
Madame L did not deign to reply. She and her two fellow ladies remained grim and silent. They swept on with their skirts flapping and billowing most becomingly around them. None of us could help ourselves from noticing the grace of the three women as they strode down the corridor.
No longer a blushing damsel, Madame L was entering her second youth, nearing her fortieth year. Her hair was long and wavy, running in dark curls down her back, the dark curls running to silver, which matched the silver ribbon in her hair. Her skin was not so pale as the ethereal Madame Z, who bathed in moonlight, nor had she the statuesque proportions of Dabrowski's wife. Madame was dressed simply, in a plain white gown and a red shawl.
What was arresting about Madame L were her intense dark eyes. Staring into them was like staring down the barrels of a pair of duelling pistols. I could not tell you what colour they were, I believe that they may have been blue, for I found it easier to stare at the Russian guns than into that gorgon gaze.
“Hey, Blumer,” Sierawski nudged me in the ribs, “I'm hungry. Are we to eat? This is the old dining room!” We found ourselves in the same dining room where we ate on the Third of May, and where we behaved so disgracefully. No guns sounded in the distance. It was as if time stood still, and all was well, for Madame L’s great walnut dining table still stood in the centre of the room. It was growing dark outside. We sank into the soft chairs and chaise longues that had served the learned posteriors of so many illustrious diners over the years, and that now served our thin, horse-aching arses.
Instead of a banquet, there were a number of great wooden boxes on the table. Instead of food, we found these to be filled with treasures. Silver rosaries, ivory boxes, gold watches and snuff boxes, filigree cutlery and crystal glasses. I should have swapped any one of those golden chalices for a loaf of bread or a glass of wine to ease the dust from my parched throat.
Resting along the length of the table was a flag wrapped around a long lance, tipped with a cross instead of a spearhead.
“These are Sobieski's trophies, and this flag was Sobieski's standard,” Madame L told us. “This is a sacred relic. King Sobieski drove the Turks back from the very gates of Vienna, in 1683. Christendom itself had been hanging by a thread, for had the Turks taken Vienna, then Austria should have fallen, and had Austria fallen, then all Europe would have gone down with it, like a horse sucked into quicksand. But Sobieski lifted the siege, defeated the Muslim hordes, and saved Christendom from sure destruction.”
“Aye,” I snorted, “and one hundred years later, Christendom repays us by cutting our throats! We'd have been better off throwing our lot in with the Sultan! Who is here to lift our siege? I see no French armies hastening to our aid! I hear no word from the Pope for a crusade to save us! No hand is raised against our slaughter!”
Immediately we fell to arguing.
“Silence!” Madame called in a resounding voice. We obeyed, meek as infants.
“As God is my witness I despair of you men. Have you any conception of why these objects are here? Do you think that they are here for you to argue over, like boors in a tavern?”
We confessed we did not. Madame placed one weary hand on the table. At that moment she seemed tired, bent over with exhaustion and despair. Then she gathered herself, like an army rallying to the colours. Her back was like a ramrod and she stood before us like a general of the guards. Deep worry lines were etched across her face that her rouge could not hide. Crow’s feet sat the corners of her dark eyes. Her hair was wild and unkempt. Still, she looked ravishing despite – or because – of all that. At last, I began to understand why Godebski loved her. She was a force of nature.
“Captain Godebski,” she said, her eyes and her voice imperious, “I entrust this sacred mission to you and your men. The situation is critical. I fear Warsaw will fall. You will take these two ladies, and these treasures, and you will quit the city, evading capture. Then you will go to Pulawy, to await further orders. You will not engage the enemy unless attacked. I will not allow these relics to fall into the hands of our enemies.”
“Madame,” Godebski said, sweeping off
his hat, bowing, and saluting, “I obey!”
“Thank you, Cyprian,” she said, softly this time, and dismissed us.
“So here we are,” I said afterwards, “risking our lives for tarts and trinkets! This is a foolish errand. God help us, if we are caught, they shall hang us for looters and rapists! Ah, well, it could be worse. I've had my fill of sieges. A good ride in open country – pursued every inch by the Cossacks – will be wonderfully invigorating for one's health!”
We stood in silence in the courtyard, smoking our pipes, and watching the leering moon. Whorls of white smoke from our pipes curled out into the night sky, and had Pan Twardowski but had a nose, then he should have smelled the sweet tobacco.
“Will Warsaw fall?” Sierawski asked, anxiously.
“It will be a hell of a battle,” I said. “We have only five regiments to defend the city. We are facing fifteen regiments of Prussians and thirteen of Russians, with eleven batteries of cannon.”
Song of the Legions Page 15
