Song of the Legions

by Michael Large

  “Such a strong position, a natural fortress – those walls, this harbour! If only we had such advantages in Poland!” Sierawski enthused.

  “Didn’t do the Romans any good, though, did it? That chain, this harbour, those huge land walls?” Tanski sneered, weakly, from his seat, for he was riding in a wagon beside us. Although he had recovered somewhat, he could barely walk, let alone ride his horse. He was wrapped in a blanket, and taking badly to being an invalid. His mood was even more foul than usual.

  “Where are the Romans now, eh?” Tanski castigated the dead Romans. “Stupid bastards! Gone! There are no Churches here. I see only mosques and minarets! Byzantium sank beneath an Ottoman tide, and was obliterated. Erased from history, like Troy and Carthage, and ...!”

  His head dropped, and he wiped his eyes. We all fell silent. Would the same fate await Poland? Annihilation? Genocide? The Ottomans had usurped the Romans, driven them from Byzantium, and made it their own. We too had been driven from our homes by a tide of barbarians and savages. Would we ever return to our motherland?

  A Polish courier, acting as our guide, collected us and led us off, in column. In the great chaotic swirl of the harbour, whole camel trains, thousands of people, and hundreds of beasts came and went. Like the great chain, no one paid us any heed whatsoever. Impassive Janissaries watched us go by.

  Heathens or not, the Arabs treated us with great respect, and we spent one month enjoying the hospitality of the Sultan. We soon learned why – they meant to ensnare as many of us as they could for their army, which was sorely short of good officers. For they knew well that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Here there were sirens to trap the unwary. We needed to plug our ears with wax, blind our eyes, and tie ourselves to the ship’s mast, to resist the temptations of the City of the World’s Desire.

  We were quartered in the old diplomatic mission buildings and embassy. These lay empty, as we had no ambassador, and no nation. So General Dabrowski’s chief spy, Rymkiewicz, his man in Constantinople, had taken them over, and now they swarmed with soldiers. Every day another company took ship for the Legions in Italy, but there were many men to carry, and we must wait our turn. We were told this by Rymkiewicz himself. It was this spy who had arranged our safe passage here with Hassan. He was a tall, handsome man, very able, and a great soldier. He was a close friend of Cyprian Godebski, but when I asked him for news, he shrugged, and said there was none. Cyprian’s fate was in God’s hands. This same spy Rymkiewicz was dumbfounded when, after three short weeks, we received an invitation to dine at Hassan’s palace. The wily old one-eyed Sheikh had not forgotten us, it seemed.

  “Try not to get killed, and don’t convert to Islam, if you can possibly help it,” Rymkiewicz said drily. “But you cannot refuse the invitation – it would be a mortal insult, and there would be blood. Enjoy yourselves. That’s an order.”

  In truth we had no intention of refusing. We were itching to explore this celebrated den of iniquity. For Constantinople was well known as the most depraved city in the world, as well as the richest, for the two things always go hand in hand. It was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the age. Decadent Paris was but a Sunday school by comparison. We had been provided with a small allowance – one hundred piastres each – and we meant to spend every last tynf of it on debauchery. Even Tanski had rallied, and dragged himself from his sickbed, proclaiming between coughs and constant trips to the latrines that he was completely recovered.

  So off we went together, in a tiny boat, that drew us across the water to our destination. Hassan’s grand abode was the size of one of Warsaw’s city blocks. It stood hard by the water, and the dappled light shimmered on the sandstone walls. A small skiff with liveried servants bore us to the Palace’s private jetty. Armed guards patrolled the walls. We stepped ashore and were led by a perfumed eunuch through a vast iron-bound door, wide enough to admit an elephant. A huge iron portcullis studded with garnets hung overhead. Slaves fawned on us as if we were the sons of the crimson ones.

  “In what manner of army,” I said to my comrades, “does a General have such a Palace as this?”

  Hassan wore a curved dagger and curling slippers to match. The dagger had a huge jewel on the end the size of a hen’s egg, and was stuck in a belt that was also studded with huge jewels. His grey beard was dyed black, and was oiled and tied with ribbons. Although he had obviously bathed, still he smelled like a rutting ox, beneath the wafting clouds of perfume that he had been doused in. The Old Janissary greeted us all warmly, as if we were his lost sons – even Birnbaum. It turned out that this was how he viewed us all – as prospective sons. But he began with a lamentation.

  “Every day the Sultan still asks where the Polish Ambassador is,” he said, “and every day the Vizier replies that the King of Poland regrets that he cannot pay his compliments. An empty echo in eternity!”

  A water pipe was brought and set before us, with a great bubbling glass globe, and eight arms like an octopus. Hassan and we Poles smoked, and the tobacco smelt sweet as honey. It was the fruit of the lotus flower – hashish. After a few bubbling pulls on the pipe, the room was suffused with a warm happy glow.

  “We will restore our land, and our eagle,” I said quietly to Hassan, “our Poland will rise again, like Our Christ.”

  “As God wills it,” Hassan said. Steaming food was brought on silver platters. Hassan scooped up a great handful of curried lamb in his massive paw. We did likewise. The dinner was delicious, and strongly spiced, but it burned like hell on the way in – and indeed on the way out.

  “Flags and names matter not. You are Poles, I am a Cossack. So what? Everybody must serve somebody. I have fought eighty-five battles, and given my eye to the Sultan. I serve the Janissaries, and it serves me well! What does it matter who you serve? It matters not! What matters is the reward for service!” he laughed, pointing at the opulence that surrounded him. Then he thumped his barrel chest, rattling his gaudy gold finery.

  “I am well rewarded! I, Hassan! A humble Cossack, born in a tent on the steppes, born the son of a whore, no less! I had no fame, no name, why, not even a father! Yet here I sit, a Sheikh and a General. I have one palace, three wives, four daughters, and a harem of concubines,” he bragged.

  “Where are your dear lady wives?” Tanski asked, interested. Indeed, there were a dozen glum-faced Turkish lads in attendance, flunkies, bodyguards, servants and soldiers, all wearing Hassan’s livery, but not a single female.

  “I see a great deal of swords here, but not many spear-carriers, Excellency,” I said, for I too was curious, and I craved women’s company. “In Poland, a man has but one wife, but she and his daughters may sit at table, and speak their minds, and sing to his companions. Why,” I said sadly, “we even have women warriors in Poland,” and I thought of Madame, the courageous Castellan, lioness of Poland.

  Hassan grinned. “Blumer, you have much to learn of our ways! Decent women do not consort with men outside their family. Decent women go veiled out of doors, if they leave the house at all. My daughters stay confined in their seraglio. Until it is time for them to marry, that is.” He said this last very meaningfully, and we all sat uneasily on the floor. Particularly Tanski, who dreaded matrimony more than death, for he lived only to kill men and chase women.

  “Are all the women in the City decent?” I asked Hassan, with a grin.

  “No! They are not, Allah be praised!” Hassan replied, and clapped his hands. With that, we heard silken rustling, jangling bells, giggling, and footfalls. This was the garden of earthly delights indeed. These were the famed houris of the east, belly-dancers, courtesans, slave girls. A whirlwind of beauty!

  In swept a pair of willowy Circassian girls, to dazzle and entice Tanski and Sierawski. A dusky, busty girl flung herself on Birnbaum’s lap. All of the girls writhed as supple as snakes, undulating their bellies, wiggling their backsides, tossing their long shiny hair with their slender fingers. All of them were naked save for jewels and wisps of silk to save what little
remained of their modesty, and barely covering their womanly charms.

  Before me, like a dream of beauty, were a raven and a redhead, no older than seventeen years apiece. They were as supple as acrobats, stretching up their long slim legs, to make their silver anklets touch to their golden earrings. It was said that Bullock used to buy girls from Constantinople’s slave markets, and these were slave girls. Here we were, wallowing in the same filth as our traitor king.

  And yet, and yet – the gleam of their skin, the warmth of their flesh. A man is only blood, and blood runs hot. We had spent so long without the company of women. Still the girls writhed, their breath hot on my neck. Still I did not resist.

  “What rank are you in your Legion, Blumer?” Hassan said to me slyly, “a captain?”

  “A warrant officer. Not even a lieutenant, Hassan,” I replied, tearing my eyes from the intoxicating beauty of the two girls, and back to his ugly old face.

  “What?” he spat on the priceless Persian carpet. “Infamy! I will make you a Colonel of Janissaries this very day if you swear yourself to me. A regiment of five hundred Cossack cavalry at your command. I shall give you my eldest daughter, too, Blumer, a thousand ducats for her dowry, and these two girls for your harem. What say, you, lad? Is it a bargain?”

  He spat in his palm, and held out his hand. “Here you may have your heart’s desire, Blumer,” he said.

  “What of my comrades?” I replied, shaking my head.

  “By Satan’s beard, that’s why I want you! Because you look after your men. Have no fear, Colonel Blumer - I have another three daughters, after all! One for each of your captains, here! Each of your comrades will captain one of your companies!”

  Now I’ll be damned if I won’t say it wasn’t tempting. If Felix Potocki had tried this on me, why I doubt I should ever have left Podolia. But damn it, Blumer, I said to myself, your blood is as cold as a lizard’s, you are a man of steel and slaughter. You cannot fall for this old trick. Yet there we sat transfixed, like the lotus eaters, transformed into pigs by this stinking Circe and his siren slaves. Hassan sought to made us into golems. Killers to do their master’s bidding.

  “Of course you will all have to convert,” Hassan was saying, “and that means no pork, and no more vodka.”

  Sierawski looked up from between a girl’s thighs. “No more pork? No more vodka, you say?”

  Hassan tapped the water pipe. “The lotus is better than any drink, and the harem tastes sweeter than any pig’s flesh.”

  Birnbaum tried and failed to get the girl off his lap. “Convert? This Jew will die first,” he said, unsteadily, his jaw slack, his eyes glassy.

  “Be still, sweet Jew,” Hassan crooned, “you have already had the unkindest cut, what more have you to fear from me?”

  Tanski looked up from his stupor. He had hardly looked at the girls, he was so out of sorts. He was hardly moving. It was most unlike him, for he loved to chase women above all things. “Wives, you say? The Devil take that,” Tanski muttered. “I’ll not give up my freedom!”

  “Four wives and ten concubines is enough for any man’s appetite,” Hassan laughed.

  Then one of the girls took my hand, to lead me off to the dark of a nearby chamber. Hassan sat on his cushion, wrapped in wreaths of smoke, grinning and laughing. All the earth spun around the room. The second girl took hold of my other hand. She saw the ring, and cooed at it, covetously. My mother’s ring. One hundred ducats of gold, rubies and diamonds. She saw my drowsy drunken eyes. She made to slip the ring from my finger and spirit it away.

  “Damn it!” I shouted, wide awake from the evil dream, pushing the slave girls away, roughly. They cowered, and cried. At last I looked at them, and the scales fell from my eyes. I saw them for what they were, through the haze of smoke. I saw the hanged girls from Podolia, the women that Szymon Korczak had murdered. Then I saw them again for what they were, two poor whores, slaves to the Janissary. I shoved them roughly away, and the redhead shrank back, and tripping across the carpet, kicked over the great pipe. It shattered on the ground with a crashing hiss, like a huge angry serpent.

  The spell was broken.

  “Comrades!” I called, dragging the nearest to his feet, and rousing the others with sharp kicks, “a guest stinks like a fish after three days! We have outstayed our welcome!”

  “We’ve only been here for three hours!” Sierawski whined. I seized him by the hair and hoisted him to his feet. Tanski was lying on the floor, out quite cold. I grabbed him and hoisted him over my shoulder. There was a great commotion, as you can imagine, and a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth, and angry girls demanding their fee. Hassan sat among the broken pipe, as his slaves hastened away the shards and debris. He gazed at me as we struggled into our kontusz, and away from the chamber.

  “Fare thee well, General,” I said, with the insensible Tanski slung over my shoulders, head down, “we will all long remember this night. I thank you for your hospitality. I thank you for your offer. But my heart’s desire lies not within your city.”

  “Then go with God, Blumer,” Hassan said, and bowed, his face immobile as stone. I dragged and carried my reluctant comrades out of Hassan’s palace back onto the jetty.

  “What the hell did you make us leave for?” Sierawski complained as we made our way through the cold dark moonlight back to the boat. “I was just starting to enjoy myself!”

  “Tanski is ill,” I said, by way of excuse. “Wake up, Kasimir,” I said to him, slapping his face gently, and pouring water on his lips. He stirred somewhat, and cursed, and called for his mother. The next moment he was quite insensible.

  “It is surely the drink,” I said, concerned, but Tanski had barely touched a drop that night.

  Tanski was gravely ill – his malady had returned. Abruptly, he awoke from his deep sleep, and fell into a delirium, half asleep, half awake, shrieking and crying out. When we were some distance from shore he thrashed weakly about in the boat like a fish, and tried to climb out of it. I held him fast in my arms and whispered to him until he calmed himself. There was scarcely more strength in him than a rabbit. He drifted in and out of consciousness. When we reached the embassy, he fell to his knees, and vomited. There was blood in his soil.

  “What is the matter with him?” Sierawski whispered.

  “It is the plague,” someone said, and we crossed ourselves.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  HE WHO SWINGS CANNOT DROWN

  Two days out of Constantinople, in the Mediterranean, bound for Genoa, we were attacked by pirates. They were waiting for us. Four galleys. Black flags.

  We had three brigs. The first, a quarantine ship, carrying the wounded, flew under a yellow flag – quarantine, infectious diseases. Leprosy, yellow fever, cholera, plague. Aboard was Tanski, lying helpless as a babe in his hammock, bleeding out his life from every orifice. Not surprisingly, the pirates let them go.

  Our second brig was a swift merchant vessel, with a complement of only seventeen. It contained a vital passenger – the French Ambassador, Du Bayet. He had been visiting us, and inspecting our troops. When told of Sierawski’s exploits – his bravery at the sieges of Krakow and Wola, his cunning at the ford of the Dniester, and his ingenuity during our shipwreck – he had appointed Sierawski his personal bodyguard. Sierawski was to be promoted, and paid in gold. I could scarcely credit it.

  Sierawski’s brig was fast. It sailed south, as we had agreed beforehand, with three of the pirate galleys in hot pursuit, stretching every stitch of canvas to catch their quarry, a fine prize for ransom. Soon they were gone.

  With a pang, I felt the loss of my friends. The loss of Cyprian Godebski – disappeared. The loss of Tanski – mortally ill, for all we knew. The loss of Sierawski, caught up on a fool errand protecting a damned Frenchman, bound for a fate unknown.

  “Hassan sold us out,” I said to Birnbaum, who was loading a blunderbuss.

  “Do we run?” Birnbaum asked.

  “No need,” I laughed, “Tis a fair fi
ght – one to one.”

  “You should raise the white flag. They will ransom you in Tunisia, you will see. You cannot win. The pirate ships always carry big crews, for boarding merchant ships,” one of the Turkish sailors said. It was the ship’s helmsman, a craven fellow indeed.

  “So do we, you damn fool,” I replied, “we have twenty Legionnaires aboard.”

  Through the glass, I took in the pirate ship. Algerian, flying the flag of the man in the moon – like Pan Twardowski, I thought, with delight. How apt. I swept the decks, saw what I expected to see, and snapped the telescope shut.

  I was well used to the sea now. My body ducked and rolled like a boxer, swaying with the wild heaves and gentle lurches of the ship. I had my sea legs, and I fancied myself alright – as a pirate captain, the same as these pirates on the horizon. I had no nation. I was bound by no laws. I was hunted by all.

  “Aha!” I said, with delight. “There he is. Birnbaum – break out the sabres, have the men load every musket and pistol, but tell them to keep their weapons out of sight. Assemble them on deck.”