The Marquis of Bolibar (2 page)

"Come now, Thiele," I replied in jocular vein, "the Bible tells us that God gave man everything that moveth and liveth to be for his meat, so why not that shrimp?"

The corporal opened his mouth to remonstrate, but no adequate rejoinder to my Biblical quotation occurred to him.

A moment later he put a finger to his lips and gripped me by the wrist. He had seen something that made him forget his ill- temper in an instant.

"Lieutenant," he said softly, "there's someone hiding over yonder."

I dropped to the ground in a trice and crawled stealthily toward the garden fence.

"One of the guerrillas," the corporal whispered close beside me, "— there, under that bush.'

Sure enough, I saw a man crouching among the laurel bushes barely ten paces from me. He carried neither sword nor musket; if he was armed, he must have had his weapons concealed beneath his clothes.

"There's another - and another, and another! There must be more than a dozen of them, Lieutenant. What devil's work can they be up to?"

I could make out more men lying or crouching everywhere — behind the trunks of the elms and walnut trees, in the yew hedges, in the bushes, on the grass. As yet, none of them appeared to have seen us.

"I'll hurry back to the inn and warn the others," whispered the corporal. "This must be the guerrillas' lair or headquarters. The Tanner's Tub cannot be far away."

Just then a tall old man in a dark cloak trimmed with velvet came out of the house and slowly descended the steps, head bowed.

"They're after him, I'll wager," I said softly, and drew my pistol.

"The bandits plan to murder him!" hissed the corporal.

"When I vault the fence," I told him, "follow me and have at them." No sooner had I spoken than a figure rose from the lee of a mound of gravel and ran up behind the old man.

I raised the pistol and took aim, only to lower it a moment later, for then we witnessed the strangest occurrence I ever saw in my life. One of my mother's brothers is a physician to a lunatic asylum at Kissingen - I used to visit him on occasion as a boy — and in truth, I now fancied myself transported to the garden of that same madhouse. One pace to the old man's rear the fellow came to a halt, doffed his cap, and addressed him at the top of his voice.

"Greetings, Señor Marques de Bolibar! A very good morning to Your Excellency!"

The same instant, a lanky, bald-headed fellow in muleteer's garb darted out from behind a sandstone statue. He, too, pranced clumsily up to the old man, halted, and bowed low.

"My respects, Señor Marques. May you live a thousand years."

But the strangest thing of all was that the old man continued on his way as if he had neither seen nor heard the pair of them. I could discern his face, now that he was closer to me, and inordinately stiff and motionless it looked. His locks were snow-white, his brow and cheeks pale, his eyes lowered. As for his bold and terrible cast of feature, I shall never forget it.

While he walked on, the other men deserted their places of concealment one by one. Like figures in a puppet show they popped out of bushes, emerged from behind tree trunks and under garden benches, jumped down from trees, and, placing themselves in his path, accosted him.

"Your most obedient servant, Señor Marques de Bolibar!"

"Good day, Señor Marques. How fares Your Grace?"

"My humblest respects, Your Honour!"

But the nobleman threaded his way in silence through the lackeys who swarmed around him like flies around a dish of honey. He made no attempt to fend off their importunities. His face was as unmoved as if all these noisy salutations were directed, not at him, but at some other person invisible to me.

While the corporal and I were gazing open-mouthed at this curious spectacle, a shaggy little fellow darted out of a summer- house and minced up to the old man in the manner of a dancing master. Having halted, he busily scratched at the ground with his feet like a hen on a dunghill and addressed him in execrable French.

"If it isn't my friend Bolibar! Delighted to see you!"

But not even he, who behaved as if they were the best of friends, attracted a single glance. A lone figure lost in thought, or so it seemed, the old nobleman returned to his house, climbed the steps, and, as silently as he had come, vanished into the gloomy interior.

We rose to our feet and watched while the servants, arm in arm now, followed their master into the house in small groups, chatting and smoking as they went.

"Well," I said to the corporal, "what the devil was all that about?"

He thought awhile. Then he said, "These Spanish grandees are dignified beyond measure and melancholy in the extreme. It's in their nature to be so."

"The Marquis of Bolibar must be a perfect idiot, so his servants treat him as such and make sport of him. Come, let's return to the tap-room. The landlord will be able to tell us why the Marquis's gardeners, coachmen, grooms and lackeys greeted him with such ceremony, and why they earned no thanks for it."

"They were celebrating his name-day, I'll be bound," said the corporal. "If you wish to return to the tap-room, Lieutenant, do so alone. I would sooner remain outside than venture back into that rat's nest. The tablecloth is as tattered as our regimental colours after the battle of Talavera, and the landlord's floor is covered with dung enough to dress every Spanish field between Pamplona and Malaga."

He lingered outside the door while I betook myself to the proprietor of the posada, who was busy frying thin slices of bread in oil. His wife was lying on the floor and fanning the flames with the aid of a makeshift bellows, the tube being an old musket barrel.

"Who owns the big house over yonder?" I asked.

"A nobleman," replied the landlord, without looking up from his work. "The wealthiest man in the entire province."

"I can well believe that such a mansion wasn't built to house geese or goats," I said. "How does the owner style himself?"

The landlord eyed me warily. "His Excellency the noble Señor Marques de Bolibar," he said at length.

"The Marquis of Bolibar," I mused. "A haughty gentleman, no doubt, and unduly jealous of his rank."

"Not at all! An affable and kindly soul, for all his noble birth - a truly devout Christian and far from haughty. No matter who salutes him in the street, be it a water-carrier or the Reverend Father himself, he returns their greetings with equal friendliness. "

"But he's somewhat weak in the head, surely?" I hazarded a lie to draw him out. "Urchins run after him in the street, I'm told. They taunt and tease him by calling his name aloud."

"What!" the landlord exclaimed with a look of surprise and consternation. "Who could have fed you such untruth, Señor caballero? There isn't a wiser man in all the province, believe me. Peasants from every village in the neighbourhood make pilgrimage to him when they don't know where to turn on account of their cattle, or their wives, or the high taxes."

The landlord's words seemed quite out of tune with the scene I had just witnessed in the garden, and again I had a vision of the old man as he walked, mute and expressionless, through that noisy, chattering throng of servants, making no attempt to shoo them away. I was just debating whether to tell the landlord precisely what I had seen from his garden when my ears were assailed by a blare of trumpets and a clatter of hoofs. Hearing the colonel's voice, I hurried out into the street.

My regiment had arrived. The grenadiers, begrimed and streaked with sweat after their hours-long march, had fallen out and were sitting by the roadside to left and right. The officers dismounted and called for their servants. I went up to the colonel and presented my report.

The colonel listened to me with only half an ear. He was studying the terrain and wondering how best to improve the fortifications. In his mind's eye he was already constructing ramparts and bastions, mines and redoubts for the defence of the town.

Captain Brockendorf and several other officers were standing beside the ox cart laden with their valises. I joined him and described the Marquis of Bolibar's curious morning promenade. He listened with an air of disbelief, shaking his head the while, but Lieutenant Günther, who was seated beside him on an upturned bucket, had an explanation ready.

"Many of these Spanish grandees are the queerest fish imaginable. They never tire of hearing their fine-sounding names, which are so long that you could say three whole rosaries in the time it takes to recite them. It delights them to hear their servants reel off their titles in full, all day long. At Salamanca, when I was billeted on the Conde de Veyra ..."

He launched into an account of his experiences in the household of that proud Spanish nobleman, but Lieutenant Donop cut him short.

"Bolibar? Did you say Bolibar? Why, that was the name of our late lamented Marquesin!"

"Yes indeed," cried Brockendorf, "you're right. What's more, he once told me that his family owned an estate in the neighbourhood of La Bisbal."

A young Spanish nobleman had served in our regiment as a volunteer — one of the few of his nation to have been so fired with the ideals of liberty and justice that he espoused the cause of France and the Emperor. He was estranged from his family and had disclosed his true name and provenance to two or three of his comrades only, but the Spanish peasants called him "el Marquesin" - for he was short and slight of stature — and we, too, addressed him by that sobriquet. Having fallen in battle with the guerrillas the previous night, he now lay buried in the village graveyard at Bascaras.

"That settles it," said Donop. "Your Marquis of Bolibar, Jochberg, is a kinsman of our Marquesin. It behoves us to inform the old man, as gently and considerately as possible, of our gallant comrade's death. Since you're already acquainted with the Marquis, Jochberg, will you take it upon yourself to do so?"

I saluted and made my way to the nobleman's house with one of my men, meanwhile rehearsing the words with which I proposed to fulfil my difficult and thankless task.

A wall lay between the house and the road, but it had crumbled away at so many points that one could easily get across. As I neared the building I was met by a babble of loud, plaintive, quarrelsome voices. I knocked on the door, and the din ceased at once.

"Who's there?" called a voice.

"I come in peace," I replied.

"Who comes in peace?"

"A German officer."

"Ave Maria purissima!"
wailed someone. "It isn't he!" The door was opened and I walked in.

I found myself in a vestibule where lackeys, coachmen, gardeners and other servants were running hither and thither in great dismay and confusion. The shaggy little fellow who had addressed the Marquis as "my friend" was also present. He minced up to me in his dancing master's fashion, puce in the face with agitation, and introduced himself as His Grace the Marquis's steward and majordomo.

"I wish to speak with the Marquis in person," I told him.

The majordomo clasped his head with both hands, breathing heavily.

"The Señor Marques?" he groaned. "O merciful God, merciful God!" He stared at me awhile. Then he said, "Alas, Lieutenant or Captain or whatever you may be, His Grace isn't here."

"How so, not here?" I said sternly. "I myself saw him in his garden earlier this morning."

"Earlier this morning, perhaps, but now he's gone." The majordomo turned and called to a man who was hurrying through the vestibule.

"Pasqual! Have you looked in the stables? Is none of the horses missing?"

"None, Señor Fabricio. They're all accounted for."

"The saddle horses too? Capitan the grey and San Miguel the roan? What of Hermosa the mare - is she also in her stall?"

"They're all there," the groom repeated. "Not one is missing."

"Then may God, the Virgin and all the Saints assist us. Our master has vanished - he must have met with an accident."

"When did you see him last?" I asked.

"Not half an hour ago, in his bedchamber. He was standing before the mirror, looking at himself. He had instructed me to burst into the room, time and again, and inquire after his health. 'Did Your Grace pass a restful night?' I had to ask, or, as if I were one of his friends from Madrid, 'Heaven bless you, Bolibar, what are
you
doing here?' I had to repeat that several times while he stood before the mirror and studied his reflection."

"And this morning in the garden?"

"The Señor Marques behaved strangely all morning. He made us hide in the bushes and call his name aloud. God alone knows what he had in mind, but our master never does anything without an excellent reason."

At that point the gardener entered with his lad. The major- domo promptly abandoned me and flew at him.

"What are you waiting for? Drain the pool at once, do you hear?" Then, turning to me, he sighed and said, "God grant we may give him an honourable Christian burial if we find him at the bottom of the pool ..."

I left the house and told my comrades what I had heard. We were still discussing the matter when a wounded officer was carried past on a litter.

"Bolibar?" he exclaimed suddenly. "Who spoke that name?"

Although he wore the uniform of another regiment, I knew him. The wounded officer was Lieutenant von Röhn of the Hanoverian Chasseurs, with whom I had shared quarters for two weeks the previous summer. He had been shot through the chest.

"I did," I said. "What of the Marquis of Bolibar? Do you know him?"

He gazed at me in horror, his eyes glittering with fever.

"Seize him quickly," he cried in a hoarse voice, "or he'll destroy you all."

THE TANNER'S TUB

Lieutenant von Röhn succumbed to the effects of his wound two days later in the Convent of Santa Engracia, which we fitted out as a hospital immediately after our arrival in La Bisbal. During this time he was repeatedly questioned by our colonel and Captain Eglofstein about the details of his encounter with Colonel Saracho and the Marquis of Bolibar. Although he was not always fully conscious, his statements gave us a sufficient knowledge of what had been agreed that night — the night after our skirmish with the guerrillas — between the Marquis of Bolibar, the "Tanner's Tub" and Captain William O'Callaghan of the British Army. His account of what happened at St Rochus' chapel in the woods of Bascaras enlightened us on the nature and abilities of the Marquis of Bolibar, and on what to expect from that dangerous foe of France and the Emperor.