Song of the Legions (11 page)

“Hell’s bells! It’s the Rottmeister himself! It’s Brigadier Dabrowski!” Tanski exclaimed, but did not sheath his sword.
This was a derogatory nickname in the ranks for the Brigadier, who had a Polish father and a Saxon mother. Dabrowski was educated in Leipzig, and started his career in the Saxon cavalry. There he attained the rank of Rottmeister, which is German for Captain. When the war drew near, he had come back to Poland, and been appointed one of our cavalry chiefs. Dabrowski had written our new cavalry manual, and he had trained our regiment for months. From the time he had spent among Germans, he sometimes mangled his Polish. To avoid this, he often spoke French with us.

Dabrowski saluted and bowed. With his courtly manners, and brave as a lion, he was more like a knight of olden days than a commanding officer. He was a fine officer, a good provider for his men, scrupulously honest, and no fool.

“Good morning, Tanski,” Dabrowski saluted smartly. “Comrade Blumer – I assume that you command these men?”

“Warrant Officer Blumer,” I corrected, but without taking my hand from my sword, nor my eyes off his. “You assume correctly, Sir. For my part, I assume from your colours that you command these Targowica scum yonder?"

Dabrowski nodded his great wise head sadly. “Indeed, Blumer, sad to say you are correct. I am cooperating with the Targowican military commission, since the war was lost. If I might enquire – where are your colours, Sir?”

I seized the red and white pennant on Tanski’s lance that was fluttering close by.

“These are our colours!” I roared. “For shame, Sir! You led us! You trained us! You stood with us at Zielence – has it come to this? The Devil take you – say your piece and begone, and then we can go to it, pell mell. No surrender, no quarter asked or given.”

Now this was a grievous insult. Little brothers did not speak so to their betters. It was possible that the Brigadier might demand satisfaction on the field of honour. Fortunately, Dabrowski did not take the point. He had too much wisdom. He listened to my outburst in silence, amiably enough, and nodded again. He gazed evenly at the line of cavalry, the pistols, muskets and lances aimed at his heart. Then he nodded towards the one-armed boy.

“A word, perhaps, Blumer?” Dabrowski asked, and we dismounted. We walked a little way and he placed his huge arm around my shoulders. I was a big man, but Dabrowski was a giant. He was a true Pole, and a cunning old fox. All at once I felt ashamed to have taken him for a traitor.

“My surgeon will attend to your wounded men, Blumer. After all, you will require every man you can muster to defeat us in battle,” he smiled. “A fine affair it shall be too, Pole fighting against Pole, brother against brother, countryman against countryman, and the Russians the winners
in absentia
.”

“I am sorry, Brigadier,” I said. “I spoke in haste. Please accept my apologies.”

Dabrowski smiled again and clapped me on the shoulder. We laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Then we took a pipe of Dabrowski’s tobacco (for I had none remaining) and he drank the last of my vodka.

“
He who turns and runs away, lives to fight another day
,” Dabrowski said gently. “This war is lost, Blumer. Here in Podolia we can hide, lick our wounds, and prepare for the next one. I am hiding as many men as I can in this fashion – and better to hide here than in Siberia, don’t you agree?”

“You are right,” I agreed. “We must hide. But where?”

We looked at the serried ranks of Potocki cavalry, then at my own little line of Polish horse, then back again, and then I grinned at Dabrowski. The one armed boy would see another sunrise yet. Indeed, all of us would.

“As every peasant knows,” Dabrowski said, “the best place to hide a tree is in a forest.”

Thus we rode through the heart of the badlands, with an honour guard, all pretending to be traitors.

“Are these our allies, or our gaolers?” Tanski pondered.

“We have our weapons, our horses, and our lives,” I said curtly, “be content.”

Naturally, none of us could be content. We rode with our hands on our swords and our eyes screwed to the back of our heads. We had holstered our useless firearms, for we did not have enough powder to light a pipe, let alone fight a battle.

“What were the terms of your truce with Dabrowski?” Tanski demanded, wheeling his horse in front of mine. My horse Muszka pulled up short, his red eyes rolling, and bared his awful yellow teeth at Tanski's mare, in anger at having his path blocked.

“With the war's end, the Brigadier has joined the Targowicans, to organise the army. He is protecting us from being rounded up and sent to Siberia. Therefore, we are Felix Potocki’s men now, in name, at least. When a suitable opportunity presents itself, we shall rejoin our own army.”

“The Devil! So we are Targowicans, then?” Sierawski spat, enraged.

“In name only, Comrade,” I said firmly.

“God's wounds, Blumer! In name or not, this is the worst disgrace conceivable to man!” Sierawski said, appalled.

“There is actually a worse disgrace,” I replied, grimly.

“Worse?” Tanski roared. Heads turned. “How could it possibly be any worse?”

“Felix Potocki,” I said slowly, staring into their angry eyes, “has, according to Dabrowski, been made a General in the Russian Army. Consequently you, I, and all the men here, are now
Russian
soldiers.”

Nobody spoke. The wind howled.

“You mean to tell me, Blumer,” Tanski said, “that we are hiding from the Russian Army
in
the Russian Army?”

“Aye,” I replied, “that's about the size of it,” I shrugged. “If it be any consolation, the pay is better.”

Tanski and Sierawski exchanged amazed glances.

“I swear to God, I would shoot you if I had any bullets left, Blumer, you mad dog,” Sierawski shook his head, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

As you may surmise, when the men did eventually find out, they were disgusted. Many harsh words and a few punches were exchanged, but by then there was nothing to be done about it. For their part, Dabrowski’s lads eyed us with the same sullen and angry expressions that we reserved for them. Occasionally, one of us recognised old comrades from past battles, and we fell to bemoaning our fate together.

At noon we broke camp and Dabrowski had us retrace our old hoofprints. He had hunted us down and gathered us into his fold, like lost sheep. Whether we would end up put out to pasture, or skinned for the butcher’s block, remained unknown. On the low horizon we rode back past the hanging copse of trees that we had passed two days hence. A murder of carrion crows wheeled and danced in the branches, fat as buzzing bluebottles. Something ill had befallen.

We three broke away from the rest, without orders, without words, beating our horses’ hooves across the desolate rutted road. Under the hanging trees we found the raven and the redhead, their bodies swinging from the maiden boughs, their tiny feet circling as they turned and twisted at the end of a length of hempen cord. Their hands were tied behind their backs and their heads hung forward, like nuns at prayer. Shortly, Dabrowski arrived with his bodyguard. We stared at the ghastly gallows, as the wind blew russet leaves struck with dewdrops and blood about the broken bodies.

“This is Felix Potocki’s doing,” he cursed, and wept. We cut down the girls and we washed their bodies with the last of our drinking water. We had no choice but to bury them at that desolate unconsecrated copse, wrapped in our tattered flags. We sang the hymns and psalms, and gently tamped down the earth with our hands. We swore vengeance over the graves. Then we rode on, to Tulczyn.

Tulczyn Palace was the Potocki clan’s ancestral stronghold. The old mouldering castle had been razed by the Cossacks, decades before, during their great rebellion, when they had massacred thousands of Poles, Jew and Gentile alike, here. Felix’s father had the new Palace rebuilt on the same site. It was a modern fancy house, such as the Kings of France lived in – imposing buildings, like Greek temples. Three of these huge edifices had been erected here, on three sides around a gigantic courtyard. New and elegant as it was, it stood on the graveyard of a massacre, on pyramids of unquiet bones.

This new Tulczyn had no need of fortifications. It was a palace, not a castle. Felix felt so secure that he had no need of walls or ditches. This was his kingdom. His word was law, and he had the power of life and death over every man, woman and child in Podolia. Including us. We rode past a stretch of ground where workmen toiled with rocks and soil.

“Felix is building a park for his mistress, who is now his second wife,” I told my comrades, for this was common gossip in Podolia.

“Whatever happened to Felix’s
first
wife, then, Blumer?” Tanski asked sarcastically.

“Felix gave her a Podolian Divorce,” I replied.

“Which means what?” Sierawski asked suspiciously.

“He threw her down a well!” I replied, for it was the truth. With that we rode into the stables, and dismounted. There was a magnificent
ménage
next to the courtyard, a place for training horses, as grand as one would find in Vienna or Madrid. It would have pleased me to have seen it, but I was given no time to tarry. Armed guards, dressed in Potocki's blue livery decorated with the Pilawa cross, ordered me peremptorily away from my fellows.

Vexed by this turn of events, I took stock, unsure whether to flee or fight. No one had tried to search or disarm me. I still had my sword and pistols, albeit neither of them was loaded, for we had long since run out of ammunition. So I girded up my loins, stuck out my chest, and marched into Tulczyn behind the guards. I was conveyed to a great study in the very largest and grandest of the three great palace buildings.

The sumptuousness of this room exceeded the Wawel, the Sejm, and Madame L’s salon all put together. At the centre was an enormous fireplace, with a gilt and bronze mounted mantelpiece, which alone must have cost thousands of ducats. A stack of logs burned in the fire, casting a diabolical red glow over the face of Felix Potocki, the great krolik, who sat, wreathed in smoke, stoking the flames with a gold-handled iron poker in the shape of the Pilawa cross.

“
Gosc w dom, Bog w dom
– when a guest enters the house, God enters also.
Good day, my young lord brother.” He did not deign to get up.

“You do me honour, My Lord,” I said, stiffly, in a surly fashion, and made a half-hearted bow. For my mother had taught me good manners with a leather strap, and I would not disgrace her here, before this loathsome man.

Felix Potocki had a long face like a horse, with curly grey hair greased and pomaded back from his forehead. He wore lace cuffs at his wrists and a lace ruff at his neck, like a fashionable dandy. A man of average height and build, or less, and scrawny in the shoulders and legs, I towered above him. With his feeble stature and dressed in those milksop’s clothes, he could not have looked less the Warlord of Podolia. Yet such he was. For when Felix glanced up at me, he had the eyes of a wild beast – they were deep-ringed black pits, bloodshot and sunken. He was a man to be feared, after all. When he spoke, he was full of false kindness and concern, as if to a small and disobedient boy.

“Here you are, the prodigal son, young Blumer! I welcome you with open arms! By all accounts you fought well in that foolish rebellion you called a war. I can see that you have your father’s talent for a fight! I have sent him word, he knows that you are safe.”

Before I could reply, a lackey brought in a letter on a silver platter. Felix read it, grimaced, and threw it on the fire. We watched it burn.

“That damn fool Poniatowski has challenged me to a duel,” Felix said, at last. “Can you imagine? How tiresome!” Clearly he meant Pepi, and not the Bullock. Now if Pepi were to kill Felix in a duel, then honour would be satisfied.

“Will you accept the challenge, My Lord?” I asked.

“Duelling? Barbaric! Out of the question,” Felix said dismissively. At Felix’s side hung a sabre with a solid gold handle, dripping with diamonds. For all the gold and jewels it displayed, it was naught but a dress sword, and I reckoned he could barely have opened that letter with it. He was not a fighting man – he was a man born for giving orders that others might do the dying.

“Then you do not hold with duelling, my Lord?” I said. There was no question of Felix fighting a duel with the likes of me, he was far too grand to even contemplate it. I was worth less to him than the horse dung beneath the feet of his grooms. Still, if it was beneath his dignity to duel with me, well, then I would provoke him as far as I dared, and have a little sport with him.

“No,” Felix replied, offhandedly, as if swatting away a fly. “Of course not. The Empress has forbidden her subjects to duel – it lacks discipline.”

“The Empress! Pah! A mere German whore!” I said with contempt, for Felix’s mistress was the daughter of a Prussian soldier. “My father taught me only a coward would run from a duel,” I said, mockingly.

“Your father!” Felix said, ignoring the slight on his mistress. Why, this devil was even smiling now. “What a great servant your father was. One of the old school! A great rent collector.” He waved a hand at his enormous palace. “I need my rents. This place doesn’t pay for itself, you know, boy.”

My father was an extortionist, a slave driver, and a thief, and the peasants hated him more than they hated the Jewish moneylenders – which was a great deal. Still, I was not going to defame my own kin in front of this creature. A servant charged Felix’s glass, then my glass. Felix called for his opium pipe, to which he was greatly devoted, and waited impatiently while another servant lit it. He smoked, breathing in deep, and great clouds of smoke billowed around the room. He did not offer me a puff, I noted, but kept all for himself. The smell was sickly sweet. I had another tilt at him as he smoked.

“I trust my father is well, my Lord,” I said, “for his health has suffered from all of the wounds he has obtained in your service. My father never turned down a duel in his life. Most of them were fought on your account. If any man should call you a thief, a poltroon, a traitor, a Russian stooge, or a wife-murderer, why, my father would instantly leap to defend your honour! He took many cuts in that way – the damn fool.”

Felix failed to stir. He merely raised an eyebrow and smoothed his sable cloak. Diamonds, emeralds and sapphires glittered among the folds. Felix – who naturally wished to change the subject away from his abject cowardice in refusing to fight Pepi – let out a great puff of smoke.

“Do not try my patience, boy – for I know what you are about,” he said, and he smiled again. Still smiling, he went on to say, “you are trying to provoke me, my fine young lad. Well, if you continue with your feeble schoolboy taunts, I shall have you flogged around the courtyard with the knout – how’s that?”

The hell with these rich cowards! I ground my teeth and held my tongue. He would not fight me, then, that was clear enough. Yet I might simply kill him – the thought took root in my mind. He stood before me, armed with only his dandified penknife, and I had my sabre, sharp as a razor, that had opened several heads in the war. But if I were to kill him out of hand, then it would have to be common murder. I had no stomach for that. I am no assassin – I am but a soldier.

Felix, having shown his teeth, spoke again. “Now keep a civil tongue in your head, and pray you silence, and listen to your Lord, young Blumer. I have never had such a good steward and rent-collector as your father, but he grows old, and tired. Why, he has not even the consolation of your mother’s company in his old age. Such a fine lady!” This last he said through gritted teeth, for Felix and my mother loathed each other. “How many years has it been since your mother died?”

Long years had gone by, but I grieved her as keenly as if she had died that very morning.

“Three years,” I said. “She would have wept to see what our nation has been reduced to.”

Felix shot me an angry glance, and thumped the plump cushions on the arm of his velvet chair. “Yes! That is so! Reduced to a state of chaos! Our ancient laws tossed aside and trampled upon! The rights of the nobility stolen! A Constitution drawn up that was a pact with the Devil himself! The nation was beggared by Jews and Jacobins – and I have saved it!” he snarled. Then he calmed himself. With the young, Felix knew, you must try flattery.

“Enough of politics,” he said smoothly, “the war is over. Since you mother died, you are all your father has left, my dear Ignatius. Your father has been in despair, with you riding out with rebels and traitors – an outlaw, no less. You have led us all a merry dance, and defied the Empress!”

“It was my duty to Poland,” I retorted. My blood was up.

“Duty, indeed!” Felix snorted. “There is a list of names in Moscow,” he said slyly, “and your name was on it. That is where your foolery has got you.”

“Death warrants,” I said, thinking of Pepi’s letter, that I and my comrades had signed. Despite my anger at Felix, my blood ran cold. I began to sweat, and thirst for another vodka.

Felix shook his head. “Legal process, dear boy! All enemies of Russia will be lawfully punished. But fear not! For I have interceded upon your behalf, as I have on behalf of many others, who have also allowed themselves to be led astray. The Empress is persuaded that your actions were misguided – youthful high spirits, shall we say.”

The devil! The snake! Smoke rolled from his jaws like the mouth of Hades. My very flesh crawled.

“I am grateful for your act of selfless kindness,” I said sarcastically, “and my men and I will be on our way! I know you are too honest a Lord to expect anything in return.”

I made to turn, but Felix clicked his fingers, as he would to an unruly dog.

“Not so fast! You have been granted amnesty by the Empress,” he smiled, and stroked the arm of his chair, “but I would have you serve me, as your father did. You won yourself a fine reputation as a fighting man in that foolish rebellion.”

He was eyeing me up like horsemeat. My old man was past his prime, and Felix wanted a new stallion – or rather a new gelding.

“I am flattered, Lord. I thank you.” Although he had saved my life, all I could think of was taking his. Felix was a sword's length away. His damned servants were constantly in and out, but these were effete dandies in powdered wigs, armed with nothing more than hatpins, and I feared them not. It had not occurred to any of them that any person would dare to lift a finger against Felix, or touch a hair of his head. I pondered my predicament. To assassinate Potocki would guarantee my own awful death, as well as that of all of my men. It would make the Constitutionalists appear like brigands. My mother, I knew, would have told me to stay my hand. She would not have countenanced such a dishonourable act as murder.

Then I remembered the two dead girls, and instantly flew into a rage. I determined to kill Felix, and damn the consequences. He was wearing a sword, after all, and he could take his chances like the rest of us. If he would not fight like a man, why, he could die like a dog.

As my fingers closed around the hilt of my sabre, the door swung open. Two men walked in, and interrupted the murder before it had even begun!

The first newcomer was a great fat man in a full-length sable coat and a bearskin hat. He seemed familiar. The second was a tall, blonde man with a killer’s eyes, in Russian uniform. Both were fully armed.