I, Sofia-Elisabete, Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam

by Robin Kobayashi

  ‘Listen, my girl. We’re on a long march to Calais that will take us three more weeks. When I led my soldiers on a long, forced march, and we travelled on foot, we were lucky if we even got a pail of cold water at the end of it.’

  I buried my head into papai’s chest, miserable at the thought of just a pail of water at the end of three long weeks. Several days later, my misery increased ten-fold when we came upon Vienne. On the approach to this ancient town, it presented agreeable and charming, but once we neared the centre of it, the dirt and filth and untidy homes and beggary made me wonder if Napoleon had cast a spell of deep gloom on the town-folk.

  We stopped at a wretched inn, where we ate coarse food and thereafter slept on lumpy beds. That night, papai cried out in his sleep – ‘Riflemen! Riflemen!’ – the first of many nightmares he suffered on our journey home. I patted his head until he calmed, after which he turned on his side and wept quietly into his pillow. When I asked him at day break what he had dreamt of, he mentioned the war, something gruesome he had seen near Fuentes de Oñoro, a town on the border of Spain and Portugal, and he would say no more.

  ‘Papai, did Napoleon cast a spell on you to give you bad dreams?’

  ‘Humph. You might say that,’ he rubbed his forehead with worry.

  My eyes became round as saucers. ‘Will he put a curse on me?’

  ‘He cannot do you harm,’ papai assured me.

  Papai and MacTavish exchanged a knowing look. They began to draw the charges of their double-barrelled pistols and load them afresh, something they did each morning as was their habit. Nevertheless, I feared that Napoleon meant to do us harm, and I blamed the evil emperor for cursing my papai. The curse of the emperor! My ire heightened just thinking of what the emperor had done to papai. No wonder papai suffered from melancholy and gadded about with Mr O. P. Umm.

  Grieving for my papai and his troubled heart, I followed him silently to the filthy dining room where we ate sour bread with butter and drank sweetened tea served up by a sulky landlady. Oh, how I missed the magic oranges at Villa La Luna and how Señor Gonzalez would tease me at breakfast that an orange is gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at night. But I dared not bother my poor papai by asking for an orange here in this God-forsaken place.

  Later that day we arrived in Lyons where papai spoke to some of the town-folk, who blamed the English for letting Napoleon escape from Elba. They said the English didn’t like the terms of peace and wished to stir up another war, and so that’s what happened. Papai also heard violent arguments between those who liked the king, Louis XVIII, and those who liked Napoleon. ‘Buonaparte is still very popular with some of the French people,’ warned papai. I shuddered with fear at the thought, and I remained on my guard for the evil emperor.

  The next morning, as we prepared to depart Lyons, we observed some French soldiers carrying a wounded soldier, the bright red blood staining his uniform. Papai learnt that a duel had been fought with another soldier, their weapons being swords. With a grimace, papai told us the duellists had fought over something ridiculous, such as a hasty word or a minor insult, and this unfortunate soul, now covered in blood, was not one-and-twenty. I clasped my hands in prayer as the poor soldier sank into the repose of death.

  Upon our arrival in Dijon, the town-folk’s devotion for Napoleon had seized them with great fervour, for many of the shops sold images of Napoleon on plates, cups and candle-holders. ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ the shop-keepers would cry to passers-by. Even some of the workmen carried spades and hammers with the image of Napoleon on their tools in trade. At our inn, a framed picture of Napoleon adorned each room, the better for this stregone, this sorcerer, to spy on us. Later, when we supped, papai complained that he would suffer from indigestion, because every time he ate a forkful of food, the image of Napoleon on the plate would stare back at him.

  The next morning, having finished my meagre breakfast of cold tea and sour bread, I was seized with a real fit of the fidgets, and so papai ordered Pico and me to visit the Necessary House and to be done with it as soon as we could. Believe you me, no one wants to linger there. When we had done, Pico and I amused ourselves with a bout of fisticuffs, he teaching me how to deliver a sharp blow with a manly spirit. ‘Yer a strong girl,’ acknowledged Pico, cradling his left arm where I had rapped him with my fist. Two crabbed-looking boys gathered nearby to observe us, the older one chewing on a straw. The rascals staged a mock fight, acting foolish and dandyish and leaving no doubt of their dislike of us foreigners.

  ‘Rosbif!’ The older boy spat out his straw.

  ‘Frogs!’ retorted Pico.

  ‘Rosbif!’ The younger boy gave us an ugly gesture of his hand.

  Not knowing what his gesture meant, I turned myself into a lion and roared – rrraaaawwrr! – and I clawed my hands in the air. My snaps and snarls, for whatever reason, upset this hot-headed boy, and quicker than a thought, he attacked me, pumping his fists into my sides.

  ‘Aieeee! Aieeee!’ yelped I in pain.

  ‘Defend yerself,’ urged Pico.

  And so I did. I rallied with a mighty roar that shook the heavens. Taking good aim, I gave a punishing hit to my foe, who thereafter tumbled onto the ground.

  ‘Well done, Soofia-Eee!’ Pico cheered me on.

  Some of the town ruffians gathered round in search of entertainment, their clamour attracting a wide crowd as my foe and I returned hit for hit. Of a sudden, someone lifted me up, tucking me under his arm, while I wriggled and kicked. ‘Manso! Be still!’ ordered papai. MacTavish, meanwhile, had seized Pico by the lug. ‘Yow!’ cried Pico, as he struggled to free himself.

  We hastened to our cabriolets, an ugly crowd at our heels. ‘En route! Hi!’ The postillions crac-crac’d their whips, the horses squealed and our cabriolets rumbled off, departing Dijon in a cloud of white dust.

  We had no sooner got away, than someone behind us fired a pistol – poomb. ‘Duck down,’ papai ordered me. So obey him I did, curled up on the seat, my heart thump-thumping with fear that Napoleon would attack us. I goggled my eyes at papai, who turned round to fire off a warning shot with his double-barrelled pistol, the loud report ringing in my ears. On seeing me quake from head to toe with fright, papai assured me that this had stopped the angry mob from pursuing us; nevertheless, he remained on his guard for what seemed a long while, instructing me to be quiet.

  When papai finally deemed us safe, he gathered me into his arms, where I clung to him until he had calmed my fast-beating heart. He examined my injuries from the fight with the French boy, wiping the blood from my nose and thereafter cleaning my face with the liquor in his flask. Shaking his head slightly, he fingered the tears in my clothes to determine if they could be mended by MacTavish, but there was nothing for it, I would need to wear the other set of clothes I had brought with me. Papai cupped my face with his hands.

  ‘Where, oh, where did my little girl go?’ his voice trembled with sadness.

  I frowned. ‘Go? Nowhere, papai.’

  ‘Changeling!’ he accused me. ‘I want the real Sofia-Elisabete returned to me.’

  ‘I am Sofia-Elisabete,’ declared I.

  ‘Impossible! My sweet little girl would never have engaged in fisticuffs with a ragged urchin.’

  ‘But papai, he called me rosbif.’

  Papai groaned. ‘Do you even know what that is?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘It means roast beef.’

  ‘Roast beef?’ My eyes widened.

  ‘It’s just a word that the French soldiers use for the English.’

  ‘Just a word?’

  Papai gave me a stern look. ‘The next time you and Pico take a freak to fight the French on French soil over a stupid word – well, you’ve got to restrain yourselves.’

  I scratched my head, wondering how I could restrain myself when threatened by a rude, hot-headed French boy.

  Papai tried again. ‘My dear child, you cannot follow up on every mad freak that comes into your head. It can be dangerous. Do
you understand?’

  I hung my head in disgrace, wondering why I got into a bout over English roast beef and French frogs. I recalled the surly look on the boy’s face and that of Pico’s. Ai! The evil Napoleon must have cast a spell on us, making us hate each other, when we neither of us were truly roast beef or frogs. But if one believes in a lie, it becomes one’s truth, thinks I.

  In Langres, papai took me to a kindly French doctor, who dressed my wounds. The doctor said my red, swollen eye would turn black for a fortnight before the bruise would fade. He suggested a good inn for us, and there, I bathed in warm water. The landlady, on seeing my wounds and bruises, scowled at papai, and no matter how hard papai tried to convince her otherwise in his bad French, she was sure he had beat me.

  ‘She believes I gave my own daughter a good drubbing,’ he muttered to himself in disbelief.

  ‘Papai, I’m ready for you.’

  Papai picked up the clothes that MacTavish had set on a chair, when he realised that it was my majo costume.

  ‘Where are your foot-boy clothes?’ he demanded to know.

  I shrugged. ‘Those are my clothes.’

  Papai grunted. ‘Did not you pack your livery?’

  ‘You said I cannot be a foot-boy for ever. I wish to be a majo now.’

  And that is why for the remainder of our journey through France, I wore a spangly majo costume. I don’t know what the town-folk wondered at first – me, the majo girl, or me, the pugilist with a black eye. Pico thought it grand to have a black eye, it being a badge of distinction for having defended good old England, and he envied all of the attention I received. But the best thing of all to him was the spectacle of the French women giving the evil eye to my papai; for, they assumed that he, being an English brute, had beat me. Pico said the ridiculousness of it somehow reminded him of the bizarre comedy we had seen once at the puppet theatre where the puppets rioted and beat each other with sticks.

  Having deemed me fit for travel, papai announced we would quit Langres on the morrow. That night, papai shouted in his sleep. ‘Frogs! Frogs!’ He swung his arm round and round as if he brandished a sword. I seized the glass of water set on the small table near the bed, and I poured the cold water on papai’s face. ‘Pfft,’ sputtered he. With a moan, he rubbed his face, and then he fell silent, but I knew he laid there awake and troubled. That morning, I kissed his hand, and I greeted him with a blessing.

  ‘A bênção meu papai.’

  Papai chucked me under the chin. ‘Oh, how I missed your blessing each morning and night.’

  ‘What did you dream of?’

  Papai became thoughtful. ‘I dreamt I was battling the enemy during the war.’

  ‘Did they call you rosbif?’

  He fingered my black eye, lightly tracing its purplish edges. ‘I do believe they did.’ And he half-smiled at me, wearing those sad, crinkling eyes of his.

  Near Troyes we entered a kind of ‘desolate nether world’, which was how papai described it. All that remained of the village were roof-less houses and black-burnt beams. The ragged villagers peeped at us from behind the ruins, their sickly countenances and hopeless despair piercing my heart. ‘Cossacks set fire to their village during the war,’ explained papai, ‘and they believe the Cossacks will return. They know not or refuse to accept that the war has ended.’ I kissed the cross on my necklace, and I said a prayer for these poor souls.

  That night, papai screamed ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ in his dreams. He pointed his finger as if he brandished a pistol, firing at the enemy. This time I knew how to act, thanks to the memory of when my mamãe Marisa had swooned on the bridge in Nervi. She had gifted me with a phial of orange-blossom scent to remember her always. I placed this phial under papai’s nose, and sure enough, it brought him out of his fitful dream. He lay awake troubled, no doubt reliving what must have been a terrifying battle during the war, and so I clung to him until he began to breathe easy and he patted my hand.

  Papai determined we would quit the countryside and take the great road to Paris, and from there, to Calais. MacTavish heartily agreed, because in every village we passed, the ‘withered crones’ sat in front of their houses peeling onions, and if he had to see one more fright, one more ugly onion-peeler, he would turn into a madman. With a secretive smile to papai, MacTavish declared he would march to Paris and vanquish anyone who stood in his way of true love and a good-looking woman. ‘Vive l’Amour!’ his eyes beamed with excitement.

  I tugged at papai’s coat. ‘I don’t want to go. The emperor scares me.’

  ‘You needn’t worry,’ papai patted my head. ‘Buonaparte is exiled on St. Helena.’

  ‘I wish for my own pistol then.’ An image of myself wielding a gun to protect my papai somehow appealed to me in an exciting kind of way, for I was keen to be an excellent markswoman like my mamãe Aggie.

  ‘Silly gooseberry,’ cried papai. ‘What you wish for is a pretty frock. Your dear papai shall purchase you one. You shall wear the very height of Parisian fashion.’

  I stamped my feet – left, right, left, right. ‘I don’t want to be tall. I want to be a majo for ever.’

  ‘When we reach Paris, your majo days are done,’ papai shook his finger at me.

  And that is why I blamed that evil Napoleon for making me dress as a girl again, because if he hadn’t cast a spell on me to turn me into an ogress who fought with her fists, I could have been a majo for ever. In Paris, papai dragged me to a dressmaker, a Madame de Montreux, where I suffered through three fittings to turn me into a little angel dressed in white, albeit an angel with a black eye and an impudent manner.

  On my last day of majo-ness, whilst we waited for my clothes to be done, Madame de Montreux suggested with a wink that papai visit the menagerie to view the heavenly creatures. There, in the Jardin des Plantes, Parisian ladies dressed in white gowns and elaborate bonnets promenaded with their coxcombical poodles, who were beribboned and perfumed like their mistresses. Some of these stylish ladies strolled together arm in arm, tittering and fluttering round papai, who, being the perfect gentleman, gave them a tip of his hat and greeted them with a jolly ‘bonjour, bonjour, bonjour!’

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ papai murmured to himself when he observed one of these heavenly creatures lifting her gown to reveal her white-stockinged ankles.

  I tugged at his sleeve. ‘Papai, I want to go to chapel.’

  ‘Now? Are you not enjoying the menagerie?’

  ‘There are no wild animals here,’ complained I.

  This diverted papai, who led me to Notre Dame, near which some squalid children begged for alms, but the passers-by, including the ladies and gentlemen dressed in the height of fashion, ignored them. Papai struck up a conversation with a British officer to determine the news of the day, while I pondered how I could help these poor, starving children. What to do? I, Sofia-Elisabete, must beg for alms again. Isso! Exactly!

  I dropped my majo hat onto the ground to collect the coins, whereupon I promenaded round it twice in a graceful paseo. I positioned myself, extending a foot and a curved arm, and with a snap of my castanets – ta-ria-ria-pi – I danced a solo bolero. Soon, I attracted a wide crowd, and when I ended my bolero with a sudden stop, a bien parado, the sous rained down on me. I gave out the coins to the poor children. ‘Merci!’ they each cried, and they ran away.

  ‘Olé!’ papai cheered me.

  I cast down my eyes, preparing myself for a court-martial. But to my surprise, papai knelt to kiss me on my forehead.

  ‘I’m proud of you, and I know your mamãe would be as well.’

  I tilted my head to the side. ‘Which mamãe? Mamãe Marisa or mamãe Aggie?’

  ‘Why, both of them would be proud. You’re the luckiest girl in the world to have two mamães.’ Papai wiped his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief.

  ‘Papai, is that why you’re crying?’

  ‘O, filha da minha alma,’ he called me the daughter of his soul. ‘I’m happy and relieved that the fairies have returned my Sofia-Elisabete to
me.’

  I opened my mouth to protest that I hadn’t gone anywhere, when papai declared I could remain a majo if I promised to wear my white muslin frock with blue silk sash and matching bonnet in Scarborough. ‘Would not your mamãe Aggie wish to see you in stylish Parisian dress?’ I pondered his question. I believed my mamãe Aggie would rather see me in my stylish majo costume, but I dared not voice my opinion. ‘Huzzah! Papai for ever,’ cheered I, content for now in my majo-ness.

  We didn’t stay longer than three days in Paris, which suited me. The din of the city never ceased from day break to mid-night, and thus I hardly slept, whereas papai snored soundly despite the screeches and shouts and neighs and squeals and rumblings of carriages and pealing of bells. He, who could not sleep in the quiet of the countryside with the mournful blare of an alphorn now and then, found it the most natural thing in the world to be lulled to sleep by constant, loud noise. And I wonder now if those noises drowned out the nightmares swirling round in his head?

  On the road to Calais I observed women with faces as brown as leather ploughing the fields, old peasants wearing cocked hats and a genteel-looking woman with a bright white cap and gold earrings riding astride a horse, just like a man. Ragged urchins accosted us at each town, some of them selling cakes, but papai would not buy any cakes for me. ‘Hola, ho!’ our postillion cried out whenever we drove by a drunken man tottering down the roadside.

  Several days later we reached our destination at Calais, where we sat idle at Hotel de Bourbon, waiting for favourable winds to carry us across the water to Dover. Having grown tired of doing nothing, Pico and I played at Mora, the noise of which drove papai and the other lodgers to distraction. Another day we amused ourselves by following a servant from room to room as he skated round with a small brush fastened to each foot to clean the boards, that is, until he locked us inside the brush closet, for he had gone quite distracted with our endless questions about his skating habits.

  At noon, we supped on soup and bouilli, a kind of meat and vegetable stew, and on meagre days, when no meat was to be had, we supped on fish or omelette with fried beans or sallad. I hadn’t savoured a dish of maccaroni in many weeks. In the afternoon, we drank boiled tea sweetened with coarse sugar and mixed with a goodly amount of boiled milk. Oh, how I missed my cioccolato italiano. I have since come to the conclusion that meagre food makes you cross, because the English travellers here argued endlessly over the hotel charges, and they complained of the number of toadstools sprouting in their rooms – either that or the disagreeable smell of aniseed from the French brown soap used by the hotel.