Song of the Legions

by Michael Large

  I put the two horseshoes together, doubling the thickness. Tensing my arms, I set my strength against the two horseshoes. Sweat burst out of my temples. My head throbbed and my sinews groaned. Then I felt the metal give, and they bent, straight as an arrow. A hush fell, and then my fellow Poles cheered me to the rafters.

  Angered, and sorely afraid that he was outmatched, the old Janissary set his gap toothed jaw, and strained his hands against the metal. Great cords of sinew stuck out on his neck and arms, thick as ship's ropes. A river of sweat ran down his brawny back. His massive arms shook with the effort. Suddenly blood ran from his nose, for he must have burst a blood-vessel with the effort. Wiping his dripping nose on his hairy arm, he raised the straightened horseshoes in triumph.

  “A draw!” he roared, in Russian.

  “A draw!” echoed the Vizier, greatly perturbed, for he clearly feared the wrath of this burly brute.

  “Like Hell,” I shook my head. “Not yet, friend.”

  Then I bent the doubled horseshoes back again, into a ‘U’.

  Our little legion cheered this to the rafters, and had there been any glass in the windows of those rude houses, why it would have been broken loose. The docks shook to their stones. With a grunt, the Janissary hawked a bloody gob of spit on the ground, and tossed his unbent horseshoes into the river, conceding defeat. His sunburned chest still heaved, for he had not yet recovered. Blood bubbled from his nose. A lackey passed him a silk kerchief. This he tore into strips, and stuffed them up his nostrils. Squaring his shoulders, he made for me. I myself was quite calm. I set my feet and chest against his blow. It never came. Instead, he held out a hand.

  “I am Hassan,” he said, “General of the Janissaries. I am a strong man, Allah be praised,” he said, with some grudging admiration, “but you are stronger! Strong as a lion!”

  “I am Blumer,” I told him.

  We shook hands. We exchanged signs, to knuckle and thumb. He was a brother Freemason. Then he held my hand aloft to his troops, and they all cheered, before doing the same to our Polish ranks. To my great surprise, he spoke fluent Russian, so we were able to converse freely. For he was indeed a Cossack, sold by his mother to the Janissaries at the age of five, and converted to the Muslim faith.

  “Welcome!” he grinned, throwing his arms around me, “for my enemy’s enemy is my friend!” We salaamed and bowed, and then embraced. He crushed me against his great chest as hard as he could, in a bear hug. Beneath his sweet perfume he smelt as rank as a bear, and sweat ran freely down his back. When he spoke, he held his face up to mine, and he roared, and flecked my face with spittle and stale fumes of garlic, cloves, tobacco, and coffee. I could not flinch, for to do so would show weakness, and so I stood there, subjected to this torrent, and I pretended it was raining.

  “I know there is a price on your heads,” he whispered into my ear, like a lover, “but you are safe here, effendi. I have been waiting here for you. I have an arrangement with your General Dabrowski.”

  One of Dabrowski’s men, Rymkiewicz, and the French Ambassador, Du Bayet, had bribed this unscrupulous brigand to escort us, and others, to Constantinople. A ship of the Turkish navy was paid to take us. I was indeed stronger than Hassan, so I bore this vile embrace with a smile, and then hugged him back stronger, until his ribs cracked, and he gasped for air. I released him, and we sat on the stone bench, laughing. Then he clapped his hands. In the blink of an eye his slaves pitched a green tent there in the dusty earth beside the harbour.

  “Come, Blumer!” he said, motioning the tent, “take a sherbet with me.” His manner had served to put me ill at ease, for the Turks were infamous for their perversions. I was heartily glad of Tanski, Sierawski and Birnbaum and half a dozen legionnaires beside me in the tent. I had no idea what depredations this strange Hassan intended.

  We sat cross-legged, after the custom of that nation, on a Persian rug, under a silk awning hung with carpets. Opposite us Hassan sat with the Vizier, and a dozen bodyguards armed with halberds and arquebuses. This rank of splendid looking fellows stood scowling at us, impassive as statues. Half a dozen slaves in golden collars ran back and forth with coffee and sherbet. It was deliciously cooling, and we swilled away the dust and sweat of the road.

  “Blumer, my friend,” Hassan said in Russian, producing a flask of vodka, “these are your men? You lead them?”

  I shook my head and pointed to Tanski. “He leads us.”

  Hassan grimaced and looked affronted. “No? The pretty one? Why, he is but your flag-bearer, Blumer! Surely? Ah, but when I look at him close, he has a killer’s eyes! Like a hawk.”

  Of course Tanski could hear every word of this exchange, but Hassan spoke as if he was not there, for he would only deign to converse with me. It must have been some protocol amongst the Janissaries.

  Hassan cast his eyes over us as if appraising horses.

  “So we have the lion, the hawk, and this one – (he indicated Sierawski) – this one is the fox! The cunning one! The three of you – the strong, the skilful, the cunning – you are like the Trinity of the Christians! And as for the fourth – you even have a Jew returned from the dead – he wears the mark of the scaffold on his neck, does he not?”

  Hassan indicated his own neck, which was also scarred with rope burns, and laughed, and Birnbaum grew pale and fretted at his musket. I stilled him with a glance, and Hassan saw this with his good eye, and winked at me.

  “Ah,” he said, “my men are good, but my officers are dust! I should say they are women, but women fight harder than they do! Turkish officers are eunuchs and catamites, worse than women. What I would give for officers such as you! Trained men, hard men, white warriors, like me!” and he thumped his chest, belched, and sighed. Beside him the Vizier began to importune, and cajole, and the two of them fell to bickering in their impenetrable tongue, which sounds like snakes and daggers. As the argument became heated, the Vizier made the palms-out, money-grubbing gesture.

  “My friend, the Sultan’s man,” Hassan explained, “wants you to pay a toll if you want to reach The City.” By this he meant Constantinople, which the Turks call by many names, but mostly it is referred to simply as ‘The City.’

  “What toll?” I said, suspiciously, for Hassan had already told me that Dabrowski had arranged for him to be paid.

  Hassan smiled. “The Vizier says you must forfeit all your horses, guns, and swords. This, he says, is the Sultan’s law. What say you, Blumer? Will you stand for this insult?” Hassan grinned, and made a secret sign to me. Drastic action was called for. I took a chance. With that I leaned forward and slapped the Vizier full in the face. The blow sounded loud as a gunshot. The Vizier fainted dead away, blood pouring from his mouth. Two of the Nubians carried him out. Hassan spat and a slave caught the spittle in a silver salver before it hit the carpet. I held my breath. No one moved. Hassan did not bat an eyelid. My comrades stared at me, aghast. Hassan’s men began to reach for their weapons and Hassan stilled them with a wave of his hand.

  “That was well done, Blumer,” Hassan observed, blandly. “My friend the Vizier insulted you, my dear guests, and he has dishonoured me. I apologise to you, Blumer, and I apologise to your men,” Hassan bowed to me, quite delighted by what I had done. Breathing a great sigh of relief, I bowed in return from where I sat.

  “Apology accepted, Your Excellency,” I shrugged.

  “You do me much honour,” he inclined his head. “As you see, Blumer – we Janissaries rule in Turkey,” Hassan grinned, tapping his antique pistol, with a hilt chased in silver and studded with jewels, “and not the Sultan’s eunuchs. It is good to be a Janissary.”

  “That,” I said, “seems to be very clear.”

  Hassan laughed again and a slave poured my coffee. What he said next astounded us.

  “Tell me, what news of Pepi?” he asked, as if we were sitting in Madame L’s salon, back in Warsaw, and not in this Godforsaken fly-blown hole.

  “The last I heard,” I replied, “the Prince was living in
exile. You know him, your Excellency?”

  “Know him!” Hassan laughed, pointing at his scarred face and jewelled eye patch, “why, he took my eye, at the Siege of Sabbatch! Ah, good old Pepi! What a warrior! Tell me, will he join your Legion?”

  I shrugged. “If God wills it.”

  At this, the Arab exploded with laughter and slapped his knees with his heavy, ringed hands. He asked me of the wars, the Uprising, of the Commander, of our adventures, of Poland, and of the fall. We talked long, and smoked the tobacco in the water pipe down to the ashes. It was now or never, or we should be sitting by this harbour until doomsday, with this evil old fellow.

  “The tide turns,” I said, pointing to the water. “We must take ship, Your Excellency.”

  “Go with God, Blumer,” Hassan said, and we all stood, our stiff knees shooting out a volley of cracks. “My man will take you to your ship – pride of the Turkish navy.”

  After thanking our strange benefactor, we took our leave as fast as we could. Beside the road the Janissaries lounged in the sun like dogs, with the hawkers and peddlers circling them like flies. Hassan clapped a huge hand on my shoulder.

  “Fight for me, Blumer,” he cackled, making the money gesture, palms out. “Much gold!”

  I laughed, for I was flattered, but not tempted.

  “I’ll think about it, Excellency.”

  Hassan watched us go through hooded eyes.

  “I will see you in The City yet, Blumer, my son! Go with God!”

  “Go with God? We will both go to the Devil, you and I!” I replied, and grinned, as I climbed onto my horse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE CRAB BOAT

  “These are damn strange sailors,” I said sceptically, staring at the mass of crabs crawling across the deck. One of them began snapping at my boot and I flipped it over on its back. “I don’t think the English Navy has much to worry about,” I added.

  “This is no battleship!” Sierawski said, needlessly, “this is a bleeding fishing boat!”

  “Thank God we have an expert engineer to advise us on these matters,” Tanski said sarcastically. He was breathing heavily and leaning on his lance, and appeared unwell. “What do you think, Birnbaum?”

  Birnbaum stared at the mass of crabs. There were crabs writhing in pots, wriggling in great baskets, clacking their claws in nets, crawling in buckets of water, and scuttling sideways across the decks. There were loose crabs battling vainly with predatory seagulls. Here and there a lucky fugitive crab would escape, and abandon ship, dropping over the side and hitting the water with a plop. Their pink, red and yellow shells shone wetly in the sun. Above all the rest, an astonishing, overpowering stink of fish assailed our nostrils.

  “This ship,” Birnbaum said wryly, “is not kosher.”

  Pride of the Turkish navy, my horse’s sainted arse! You will have divined, as we did, that this was a mere crab ship. Old Hassan had no doubt pocketed the excess fare, and substituted this cheaper vessel. Instead of an escort of marines and sailors, a dozen raddled and tattooed old fishermen worked the sails and oars.

  Still, we met another group of Polish lads on the way, about a dozen, and it was good to swell our numbers for once. Our masters had been bilked and shortchanged by Hassan, but at least we had not been robbed blind and stripped naked by the rapacious Vizier. No doubt, as soon as he had our weapons, we should have found ourselves auctioned off in the slave markets of Constantinople!

  The boat itself was of a fine enough aspect, if one overlooked the cargo of crabs, and held one’s nose against the stench of fish. It was similar to a galley – a long, slim brig, of a type they called a chebec. It had a long narrow hull, like a lance, and was fitted with both oars and sails. It had two large triangular sails at the front, and one small sail on the rear deck, which was a raised box, like a wooden castle. A castle piled high with baskets of writhing crabs for battlements, of course. These chebecs, we discovered later, were coastal craft. Fast and manouevrable, but vulnerable on the open ocean, and prey to bad weather. More of that anon, for it was almost our undoing. None of us knew anything of ships at the time, and there was naught to be done about it.

  Our horses liked this not, so we held czapkas and blinkers over their eyes, and dragged them aboard. Some would not budge, and had to be winched aboard with block and tackle, and slings under their bellies. We watched anxiously as the poor frightened horses took wing like birds, hoisted up into the sky, and were deposited, whining piteously, on the deck. The horses were not enamoured of the crabs. They sniffed suspiciously at them, and the angry crabs nipped at their noses with their pincers. So the horses huddled together at one end of the deck, and the great wooden yard yawed and heaved unsteadily. Greatly alarmed by this, for the sea was as calm as a millpond, I spoke to the crew. It was hard to make myself understood, but eventually I did. As the boat set off, I had the men and the crew spread out the horses, and tether them below the decks, at intervals, as ballast.

  Of course, this process took hours of threats, and cajoling, and hard sweat and toil. Eventually, the boat reached a sort of equilibrium, a balance, and steadied herself somewhat. The number of men running to the rail to vomit began to diminish accordingly.

  “Damned Turks could have laid on some food,” Tanski muttered, “my stomach hurts like hell, I’m so hungry.”

  “What the Devil do you think this is?” I said, grabbing a pair of passing crabs by their heels and slinging them on to a brazier. Unlike the horses, the men were greatly enamoured of the crabs, the Lithuanians amongst us fondly remembering the crayfish of their homeland. Soon the deck was turned into a kitchen, as the men cheerfully boiled buckets of crabs alive. The delicious scent of cooking fish and the sound of cracking shells filled the air, and we ate our fill of the sweet white meats. The sailors were outraged. We were eating their catch.

  “We will pay them,” I said curtly. “Pass the hat,” I ordered, filling my hat with worthless coins, brass buttons, and a few old trinkets. All I had left to my name was my mother’s ring, but that would only be taken from my dead body.

  “What?” Sierawski moaned, “we have already been robbed once! Are we to robbed again by these Turkish scum? We are armed, and they are not, remember?”

  “We are ignorant of seafaring, and they are not,” I replied, “and that is that. Pay up.”

  So we paid for our meal, and ate, out on the water. The wind and sun made us ravenous, and we butchered hundreds of crabs, and tossed mounds of spent shells into the sea.

  “Not eating, comrade?” I asked Birnbaum.

  Birnbaum looked at us with envy. “Not hungry, Sir,” he replied, licking his lips.

  “Here,” I said, taking some worm-eaten hard tack and biscuits from my bag. It was about as appetising as a length of ship’s rope, and took as long to boil down, but Birnbaum thanked me graciously, and ate it without complaint. Still, the Jew had the last laugh, for he was the only member of our whole company who did not spend a goodly part of the voyage praying over the ships rail, and giving the contents of his stomach to Neptune and the mermaids as a watery offering.

  By the time we crossed the estuary at the mouth of the Danube, and entered the open sea, Tanski had turned a brilliant white, flashing with green, like some exotic fish. He alternated between squatting in the heads and vomiting in a bucket, not even having the strength to lean over the side any more. He was in no fit state to command, not even being master of his own bowels. Arms wrapped over his chest, he lay curled up, head down in a corner, moaning balefully. Sierawski, too, though not as far gone, was devout in his prayers to the mermaids, and swayed on his feet. So at last I was in command again. It was a real case of dead men’s shoes – or rather dead men’s stomachs.

  “Look at that English bastard,” Sierawski said, enviously, for I had only vomited once or twice, “seafaring must be in the blood.”

  “Polish bastard, if you please,” I said cheerfully, “and my forbears were Irish, not English.”

  “Same
difference,” Sierawski said, and puked in a bucket.

  I alone found the ship invigorating, the swell of the sea, the deck rolling beneath me like a wooden horse. I watched, fascinated, as the sailors climbed the ropes like monkeys, adjusting the sails that grew empty or full-bellied on the wind, as the occasion demanded. As we sailed, I talked to the captain, the mates, the tillerman, even the oarsmen. I had set off from Galatz entirely ignorant of seagoing, but I was learning fast. Because we had paid for our suppers, they were happy to speak to me. They grew garrulous, and boastful, and delighted in showing me the tricks of their trade.

  We passed a good few days like this. Many comrades joined in with the crew, hauling ropes, and scaling the rigging. Still, we made poor time, for the water was becalmed, and the breath of the wind fell from a lusty bellows to a feeble whispering breath, such as would scarcely upset the feather in a lady’s hat. So I set a team of the lads to pulling on the oars, both to take their minds off the sickness, and to hurry us along. Besides, the Devil makes work for idle hands.