Song of the Legions

by Michael Large

  There, at the foot of the staircase, sheltering under silk parasols, were our generals and officers in dress uniform, and their wives arrayed in all their finery. For the Legion travelled as a wandering nation, or a crusader army. We travelled with our women folk, our camp-followers, our sweethearts (and indeed other men’s), and the old, the young, the crippled and the infirm. Those who had wives and children brought them, for we had no homes to go back to. Our houses and estates were burnt, or stolen and given to traitors.

  We counted those wives and officers we knew. We recognised the Little Negro instantly, for he gleamed like a black pearl. He stood arm in arm with a pretty blonde-haired, blue-eyed Frenchwoman. She professed to be his wife – although they were not married. As we esteemed him so highly, no one ever mentioned the fact they lived in sin, although it was an open secret.

  A Jewish officer was standing near to Dabrowski. Birnbaum told me this was Colonel Joselewicz, who had inspired him to join the Beardlings, and who had survived the Slaughter of Praga.

  Lastly, we spied, next to her husband, Madame Dabrowski, and beside her, the Junoesque Madame Zayonczek. Splendid as any statue, the white ice queen outgunned not only the other wives, and the Roman women, but the glories of antiquity itself. Raphael and Michaelangelo would have duelled to carve her marble figure!

  We saw not Madame L.

  Pius VI, the beaten pontiff, met Dabrowski here. We watched as our leader ascended the stone staircase, like a bear ambling up a mountain. Dabrowski clutched Sobieski’s flag in his great paw. That standard which had caused us such trouble since Madame had entrusted it to us. Dabrowski was a giant of a man, strong as a minotaur, able to bend two horseshoes in his hands. He wielded the double-tailed flag as easily as a toothpick. General Dabrowski himself was indifferent to religion. Yet he knew its value to the men, and accorded the beaten pontiff all honours, such as showing him Sobieski’s flag. Dabrowski and the Pope greeted each other like fellow pilgrims, as if the one had granted a plenary indulgence, and the other had paid for a cathedral to purchase it.

  We Poles did not loot churches, as the French notoriously did. So perhaps the Pope’s joy was real! At any rate, we attributed his good humours, and the city’s kind favours, to this fact. Girls waved, boys brought us water, old men asked us about our battles. Priests blessed us. One and all commiserated our fallen homeland. Like Italy, Poland was a land divided, and under the evil yoke of foreign rule. So we stood in the sun awhile, drinking in the scenery and the signoras, and sharpening our thirsts like blades.

  “That was my idea of a battle!” Birnbaum and I laughed as we fell out, when we were eventually let off the leash to wander the city. “Now let’s have a drink!”

  We wandered through the Piazza del Campodoglio, full of smart cafes. Beneath our boots was a geometric paving laid out by Michaelangelo himself, who also scribbled the designs for the pretty pink facades of the ice-cream coloured buildings surrounding the square.

  Cyprian Godebski was sitting in a cafe in the Via Calvi, with two ladies. These he introduced as the Duchesa and the Marquisa. Oh, to be a captain!

  “Tanski and Sierawski are here already,” the poet said, offhandedly, and offered us wine. We had not clapped eyes on each other for a full year. Godebski was greyer and gaunter, but otherwise unchanged. If he was still heartbroken over Madame, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it. He wore the facings of the Second Legion, and Captain’s epaulettes, and a lady’s red silk drawers were knotted around his neck. Whether these belonged to the Marquisa, the Duchesa, or a third lady, I never established. But both the ladies were vigorously contesting the trophy. At the ladies’ insistence, Cyprian regaled us with tales of his miraculous escape.

  “I was the most wanted man in Europe,” he boasted, or rather lied, “I rode through the heart of the Austrian ranks, cutting a swathe through them like a scythe through corn! Then my swift horse carried me across tyrannical Prussia, that foul police state, where spies and gendarmes lurk in every shadow! I made my way to France, the home of Liberty, and in Paris I found Dabrowski and the Legion.” He lit cigars for us all, including the ladies, who blew smoke rings in our faces.

  “Dabrowski has given me your Battalion to command, boys, to whip it into shape,” Godebski said, raising his eyebrows. “I’ve heard some pretty damned rum things about your Battalion – they say it’s full of Podolians and Jews!”

  “Damned impertinence!” we laughed. To our immense delight, Tanski and Sierawski appeared, laden with bottles.

  “Where the hell have you two bastards been!” I roared at them. “You, Lazarus,” I said to Tanski, “risen from your grave! How come you aren’t dead of the plague? Someone must have said a few prayers for you!”

  Tanski shrugged. “It was naught but a touch of dysentery. I spent twenty-eight days in bed, living on water and rusks, and then I was as right as rain.” His brush with death had sharpened his appetite, unless it had been that diet of rusks, for with that, he turned to one of the black-haired ladies nearby at the next table, bowed, introduced himself, kissed her hand, and began wooing and pursuing her with a will.

  “What about you?” I asked Sierawski.

  “The French Ambassador and I were captured by pirates, and taken to Tunisia,” Sierawski said sheepishly. “The French ransomed us after a few months. The food was good, although they had no strong liquor there, only beer and wine.”

  “My heart bleeds!” I snarled, “it sounds like torture!”

  “It was all quite civilised,” Sierawski admitted, downing a stiff drink. “We won a lot of money at cards, and smoked a lot of tobacco. They have very strong tobacco in Tunis,” he said casually, slurring his words.

  “By God!” I cursed. I was by then very refreshed myself. “You’re as lazy as a bloody horse! Some of us have been busy, settling old scores! But no matter! Who is this drunken bastard of a priest?”

  Tanski and Sierawski had with them a man dressed in Cardinal’s scarlet vestments. A lit pipe hung from his mouth. Two Legionnaries with muskets followed at a respectful distance. The priest, who was drunk, dropped his crook and mitre, and the guards picked them up. Their faces wore long-suffering expressions.

  Sierawski, who was also blind drunk by now, laughed, “It’s the Podolian Pope, Blumer! Bow down before His Holiness!”

  “Sancta Piva i Vodka!” the Priest said, casting a benediction over us all. The ladies sniggered and tittered, and primped their bosoms, and the priest leered at them with an expression that was entirely sinful, and not at all spiritual. Then he slumped over the table and passed out.

  “Who the Hell is this priest of yours? If Podolia had a Pope, he’d hold his drink better than this!” I laughed, as we propped up the old goat in an armchair to sleep off the communion wine.

  “In fact this is His Grace, Cardinal Testaferrato,” Tanski

  explained. “He is the Pope’s henchman, and a very valuable prisoner. I am his gaoler. As you can see my regime is very humane. We charge all of his expenses to his Diocese. It is a very blessed arrangement indeed. And the old fellow is catnip to the ladies – they can’t get enough of him. He never gives a penance of more than three Hail Marys.”

  With that, came three Hail Marys and Three Graces. The Marias were fair ladies in waiting, and the Graces were black-eyed Contessas. Their long hair shone ebony-black, in glorious waves. All wore dresses in the Greek style, white like Doric Columns. Rome still aped Greece in all things after all these years – just as we Poles aped the French. One Contessa and her lady swarmed to my side, and Birnbaum and I felt quite delightfully besieged, or perhaps boarded by amorous amazon pirates. We hoisted the white flag, and drank deep of the scarlet wine.

  Sierawski grabbed the cardinal’s mitre, rammed it on his head, and capered about the tables, waving the jewelled crook in the air like a lance. Great ironic drunken cheers went up all around as the engineer ran wildly by.

  “Our engineer is very highly thought of by Dabrowski, and a great favourite,” Godebski t
old me, “the French Ambassador passed on an excellent report, saying that he owes him his life. Mark my words, the lad will go far.”

  I felt a great pang of joy for my friend – for he deserved it – and a great pang of jealousy, also. With that, the mitre fell over his eyes, and Sierawski stumbled on the crook, fell, and landed on his arse in a fountain. We dragged him out, soaking wet. Ah well, one minute you’re on the horse, the next minute you’re under it! We propped him up next to the Cardinal, and the pair of them gave drunken benedictions to passers-by.

  Birnbaum, being a dark and swarthy cove, favoured pale white blondes with blue eyes. Vice versa, I, with my pale freckly Irish skin, was attracted to dark-eyed Latin girls, who reminded me of the sharp cheeked Tartar girls of Podolia.

  “Is your Sergeant really a Jew?” the Contessa asked, amazed, as Birnbaum charmed her lady-in-waiting.

  “That he is,” I replied, “a fighting Jew, like King David himself!” Birnbaum proudly displayed the rope scars and told the story of his rescue, painting me in a most flattering light. I returned the favour by describing the Cossack he slew, and pointing to the great scimitar that he still carried at his side.

  Overhead, the sky blazed a glorious blue. Luchina – for such was the Contessa’s name – told me of her homeland to the south of Italy, a place called Calabria.

  “It is a fertile land of wine and olives. To the South, near the toe of the boot,” she said, wiggling her leg by way of a delightful, if gratuitous, explanation. Her calf was milk-white and shapely under her silk stockings.

  “Intriguing,” I said, studying her map closely. As she described it, this Calabria sounded like Podolia by the sea. It was dirt-poor, rife with war and banditry, and ruled by petty chiefs and kroliks, of whom her elderly father was one. Peasants toiled in the hot sun, or shivered as the winds flayed their skins. Meanwhile Luchina sat on her plump backside in Rome, boasting about the vast estates she had never visited. She pouted prettily, and fanned away the sweat of the road from my brow.

  “My dear father is old and infirm,” she said, fretting on her inheritance, “bad men and bandits roam my estates, and take my – forgive me, his – rents.” Gorgeous emeralds and diamonds glistered at her pale, heaving bosom. She fluttered her fan and lashes coquettishly. “There are so many bad men in Calabria,” she sighed, “what is a lady to do?”

  “I am a bad man, too,” I grinned.

  “Exactly!” she smiled a gioconda smile, and brushed my thigh with her fingers, “I need a bad man, not a milksop! Those rents do not collect themselves, you know,” she confided. Ah, me! Here was another Felix Potocki, in corset and stays! Another tempting siren voice to divert me from my quest. Although, it must be said, the Contessa Luchina’s offer was tied up in prettier ribbons than surly old Felix’s, with his shaking hands and bloodshot eyes. Still, Luchina’s eyes were every inch as black as her soul, and as bewitching as the Rusalka’s whirlpool.

  “My house is on the Via Faustina,” she said, quite boldly, “be there tonight, after Church.”

  It was not so much invitation as command!

  We all spoke French together, for the ladies knew but two words of Polish – ‘Dobra Pologna!’ which they called out whenever they saw a Legionary. This new-found popularity was incomprehensible. We were the pariahs of Europe – outcasts, renegades, terrorists. There were two reasons for this. It transpired that this excited the Roman ladies. They adored bandits and desperadoes – what we call bandyta. There was a second reason – their disdain of the French.

  “Atheists! Jacobins! Robbers! We fear to go to vespers,” said the Marquisa, “we fear the French, for they are looters and,” she crossed herself, “violators of virtuous women.”

  “Then you, my dear, have nothing to worry about,” catted the Duchesa from behind her fan. We all fell about laughing, while the Marquisa burned hot as hell with fury.

  “We had better be off to Church shortly,” the Marquisa fired back, “for it is sunset now, and you will scarce have time to confess all your sins before midnight.”

  The sun was setting on the Eternal City as it had done untold times before. From Capitoline to Palatine, from the Colosseum to the Tarpeian Rock, seven shadows of seven hills fell over the filthy Tiber. The Tiber was foaming not with blood, but with the boiling effluent of Roman kitchens and sewers. No guns fired. Dogs barked. Music played. Wafting from the door of every cafe we heard the strains of the Song of the Legions, hastily improvised on harpsichord and accordion. Invader and occupied danced through a fog of vino. Godebski and I walked together to vespers through the bemused city, taking it in turns to carry Tanski’s drunken priest.

  We took the giggling ladies – all prim and proper now behind their veils – into a beautiful tiny church, a true glory to God. We gave thanks to Him, and His Son, and to the Virgin. Gave thanks and praise even after all the wars, the treachery, the defeats, the deaths and suffering. Inside, in that blessed sanctuary of the Church, it was calm serenity. A haven of cool silence after the dusty hell of the road. Yet not for long.

  “What the Devil is that?” I thought, rising from my pew. The Priest halted his Latin and turned from the altar.

  There, at the back of the Church, were four or five leering French soldiers. I had not seen any Frenchmen until now. Les Crapauds, Les Bleus, Les Galles, our friends – allies – masters. All of them had bootlace moustaches, and their hair tied back with ribbons in long queues. They wore a blue uniform with a brilliant white front, tricolore cockades in their hats, and white gaiters. These were the Sans Culottes, Revolutionaries and Jacobins, in uniform. Stinking of drink, and stinking of trouble. Militants, atheists, persecutors of religion, the Scourge of God. Sweepings of the gutters of Paris. They spouted revolutionary slogans at us.

  “Vive The Revolution!” they shouted. “Death to God!”

  They jeered the priest. Their coarse shouts echoed off the Church walls. They hooted at the ladies, made lewd gestures, and grabbed at their crotches. They drank the holy water and spat in the font. They broke the collection boxes and crawled drunkenly across the marble floors after the spinning coins. Then a thin Frenchman stuck his bayonet in the eye of the Virgin.

  At that point that my fist connected with his jaw, spilling teeth and blood. He went down hard. The other lads were close at my heels, fists and feet flying. The next Frenchman was a big man, as big as myself, and so I picked up the fallen soldier, and flung him bodily at the head of his comrade. The fight was over quickly enough. Outside, we heard the whistles of the gendarmes, the military police. The beaten Frenchmen lay on the church floor, bloodied and groaning. The big fellow raised his head to get up, and so, I am ashamed to say, I gave him an angry kick with my boot. The black Madonna on the wall gazed down at me reproachfully.

  “Moja wina, moja wina, moja bardzo wielka wina!

  My sin, my sin, my very grievous sin!”

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” I said, as we ran, “forgive me!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  THE INVASION!

  When we entered Rome we were admired and lauded – but soon we found it completely empty, with deserted streets, shuttered houses, and the inhabitants closeted away in hiding. They were afraid. French malice had inspired this fear, for the Romans had been told by the French that the Poles were a race of savage barbarians, of a cruel and fierce nature.

  The French themselves were unconcerned by the ill-will they had created. They marched off to Civitavecchia, a port that lay close to Rome. This they did with a vast amount of fuss, for they were setting out on an expedition – to invade England, it was said. Thankfully we were not to accompany them on this insane adventure, for Dabrowski had wisely kept us out of it.

  To rule Rome, Dabrowski had to convince the citizens of our true conduct and character. We had to show that we were better than the French, more decent and honourable. So Tanski, in the First Legion, with his pet cardinal, was hobnobbing with priests and bishops – and their sisters and mistresses – and having a high ol
d time. As the priests were so powerful, a great deal of money and effort was spent on entertaining them. He was making friends. It was said that Tanski was being groomed for a cavalry division, as soon as we had one, that is.

  Cyprian Godebski was at first enraged to discover that Major Elias Tremo was his commanding officer. Yet this was only a temporary state of affairs. For Tremo was soon to be transferred. General Dabrowski wanted us to have a cavalry regiment, and his man Tremo was to organise it. With Tremo gone from the infantry, the way would be clear for Cyprian to take over our division. So Cyprian awaited the happy day when his rival would be out of the way and he would be promoted. Meantime he merrily penned his own operetta, using the rehearsals as a pretence to chase the lady sopranos.