Song of the Legions (18 page)

“That German had a point, though,” Sierawski mused, as our cart rumbled over the cobbles, “where are all the girls?”

We had commandeered an apple-cart and a mule that was too old and stringy to be turned into mule-steaks, from Dabrowski’s field kitchen and on this we made our way east from Wola. To the west, the Prussian guns had started up their fiendish music again.

“Warsaw’s women are hiding in the cellars, and in the attics, praying for the siege to end,” said Godebski, glumly.

“Well thank God for that,” said Tanski, who was riding his glorious grey horse, a few yards ahead. “I’d be mortified to be seen in this company, you look like a bunch of beggars.”

I stretched myself out in the straw on the back of the cart. I had found a bruised apple in one corner and I ate it. I thought of the plump girl who sold apples on the Third of May, whose hair smelled of cinnamon, and who danced the mazurka sweetly. I wondered idly if this was her cart, where she was, if she lived. I gazed up into the afternoon sky, glowing like a vault of amethyst. The white crescent of Twardowski’s moon was faintly visible, a ghostly white scar amongst the blue.

“If you want women,” I said, “a good few of them now seem to be hiding in Madame L’s villa, which is playing host to the senior army officers’ wives and sweethearts.”

Suddenly the boys were all ears.

“Indeed! I should know, I’ve been there for two months.” I bragged. “It’s the greatest billet in Warsaw. Madame’s house is a veritable boudoir, a seraglio, a harem. There are mistresses, courtesans, paramours and princesses, blondes, brunettes, redheads and ravens. It’s a stable of thoroughbred mares and fillies!”

“Ridiculous!” Godeski cut me off. “You’ll find nothing in that house but ungrateful old harridans.”

“Aha!” Tanski and Sierawski laughed, “So the Captain remains unlucky in love!”

Godebski rounded on me angrily and drew back his fist to punch me on the nose. I sat, helpless with laughter, in the bed of the cart.

“God blast you, Blumer! You told these two swines!”

“I’m sorry, Captain, I confess,” I admitted.

“Forget about Madame L, Captain!” Sierawski dragged him off, “what about
Madame Z
? That’s the lady I want to know about!”

For the lady who aroused their most ardent interest was General Zayonczek's wife, Mrs Aleksandra Zayonczek.

“Comrades,” I told them, “I have quizzed Madame L’s parlour maid, who is an intimate of mine (although a gentleman does not say how intimate, of course) at great length on this subject. I have also had the opportunity to observe the lay of the land, and the two most prominent fortifications, at first hand.”

I made an hourglass shape in the air and Sierawski whistled appreciatively.

“You lucky bugger. I’ve been in a mineshaft for three months smelling the farts and sweat of a dozen hairy-arsed engineers!” he wailed.

“While the Jacobin General is away at the front,” I continued, “his fine lady fights her own tireless war with an implacable enemy – she fights to preserve her youth and beauty against the ravages of time. It is
a battle that, in defiance of the laws of nature, she is winning. Her skin is the skin of a twenty year-old maiden.”

“What, is she a witch?” Tanski snapped, cynically.

“An enchantress, my dear Tanski, not a witch! She preserves her body with the cold, as a butcher preserves the choicest cuts of meat. She will never so much as taste a morsel of a hot dish. She eats only raw vegetables and fruits. She drinks only milk. Each morning, she plunges stark naked into an ice bath of freezing cold water.”

“I could do with some cold water right now,” Sierawski muttered, tugging at his collar.

“She sleeps in an unheated room, always stark naked, with pots of ice under the bed, and will not even light candles in order to preserve her beautiful complexion. At bedtime, she sews herself up in roe-deer's leather for the night.”

“She must be a bloody vampire!” Cyprian whispered, rapt, as he smoked his pipe.

“Well she can drink my blood anytime, Captain. So, each and every day, after her ice bath, she takes a half-mile walk at daybreak. During this cursed siege I have often served as her bodyguard, on these constitutional walks, within the city walls.”

“Do you speak to her?” Sierawski said, his voice hoarse.

“Oh yes. One day we were walking down New World Street. My soul quakes at the memory. There were six inches of white snow on the ground, that crunched under her high-heeled leather boots. Crystals of ice gathered like diamonds in her lustrous hair. Her breath iced up as it passed between her coral red lips. She was wearing only the thinnest of Paris silk gowns, delicate as a butterfly’s wing, and I could see the goosebumps rising on her snow-white skin. She drew close, so close I could smell the rosewater in her hair, and I said to her...”

“Yes? What did you say?”

My comrades gathered around, eyes wide, mouths agog, hanging on every word.

“I said... it’s a bit bloody cold out today, love!”

“Lying bastard!”

The boys pelted me with rotten apple cores as the cart rolled into Madame L’s courtyard. With a great shock, we saw three ladies there, and we scrambled to our feet, reddening with embarrassment, and trying to gain some semblance of a respectable appearance.

Of course the first was a tall pale lady dressed in a flimsy silk gown – Madame Z herself, who else! In all of our many meetings she had not, of course, said more than two words to me. She considered me no more than a guard dog, and should have lavished more conversation and concern on me had I been such.

The second lady was the equally formidable Madame Dabrowski, dressed in sable furs. I had never met her before, in spite of all my idle boasts to my comrades.

But most terrifying of all, was the third. She was armed with a cavalry pistol thrust through her belt. It was the stern, unsmiling figure of Madame L, the fatal lady, Captain Godebski’s inamorata, and Elias Tremo’s mistress. She was also, I realised with a start, my commanding officer, and I was returning from twenty-four hours absence without leave.

Madame L turned her medusa's glare on me. After I had passed on Dabrowski’s message, she upbraided me for deserting my post, failing to follow orders, and for taking the bombs without permission, and so on. I stood, rooted to the spot, reddening. Her words stung like a knout.

It is hard to take such rebukes from a woman, as they are generally right in what they say, and one feels guilty. With a man it is easy, for he is generally wrong, and there is no shame in being hectored at by a fool. You may as well resent the wind blowing up your coat, or become angered by the windy farts of a horse.

“Indiscipline will be your downfall, Blumer,” the lady concluded, “and your adventure at Wola was the kind of foolhardy enterprise that can only be justified by success. Next time you will not be so lucky.”

Then she smiled. “Still, it was well done, boys,” she admitted. “Come inside. I have work for you.”

Inside, all was in uproar. A massive fire was burning in the grate. Great bundles of secret papers, roughly torn, were curling and blackening into thick ash. Soldiers, lackeys, and ladies came in and out, collecting muskets, swords and pistols, that would disappear into cellars and attics. Madame L swept through all of this pandemonium without a backward glance.

“What the Devil is going on? You are preparing to retreat!” Godebski spluttered, “but the siege was raised this very day, my dear lady! Rejoice! We have won!”

Madame L did not deign to reply. She and her two fellow ladies remained grim and silent. They swept on with their skirts flapping and billowing most becomingly around them. None of us could help ourselves from noticing the grace of the three women as they strode down the corridor.

No longer a blushing damsel, Madame L was entering her second youth, nearing her fortieth year. Her hair was long and wavy, running in dark curls down her back, the dark curls running to silver, which matched the silver ribbon in her hair. Her skin was not so pale as the ethereal Madame Z, who bathed in moonlight, nor had she the statuesque proportions of Dabrowski's wife. Madame was dressed simply, in a plain white gown and a red shawl.

What was arresting about Madame L were her intense dark eyes. Staring into them was like staring down the barrels of a pair of duelling pistols. I could not tell you what colour they were, I believe that they may have been blue, for I found it easier to stare at the Russian guns than into that gorgon gaze.

“Hey, Blumer,” Sierawski nudged me in the ribs, “I'm hungry. Are we to eat? This is the old dining room!” We found ourselves in the same dining room where we ate on the Third of May, and where we behaved so disgracefully. No guns sounded in the distance. It was as if time stood still, and all was well, for Madame L’s great walnut dining table still stood in the centre of the room. It was growing dark outside. We sank into the soft chairs and chaise longues that had served the learned posteriors of so many illustrious diners over the years, and that now served our thin, horse-aching arses.

Instead of a banquet, there were a number of great wooden boxes on the table. Instead of food, we found these to be filled with treasures. Silver rosaries, ivory boxes, gold watches and snuff boxes, filigree cutlery and crystal glasses. I should have swapped any one of those golden chalices for a loaf of bread or a glass of wine to ease the dust from my parched throat.

Resting along the length of the table was a flag wrapped around a long lance, tipped with a cross instead of a spearhead.

“These are Sobieski's trophies, and this flag was Sobieski's standard,” Madame L told us. “This is a sacred relic. King Sobieski drove the Turks back from the very gates of Vienna, in 1683. Christendom itself had been hanging by a thread, for had the Turks taken Vienna, then Austria should have fallen, and had Austria fallen, then all Europe would have gone down with it, like a horse sucked into quicksand. But Sobieski lifted the siege, defeated the Muslim hordes, and saved Christendom from sure destruction.”

“Aye,” I snorted, “and one hundred years later, Christendom repays us by cutting our throats! We'd have been better off throwing our lot in with the Sultan! Who is here to lift our siege? I see no French armies hastening to our aid! I hear no word from the Pope for a crusade to save us! No hand is raised against our slaughter!”

Immediately we fell to arguing.

“Silence!” Madame called in a resounding voice. We obeyed, meek as infants.

“As God is my witness I despair of you men. Have you any conception of why these objects are here? Do you think that they are here for you to argue over, like boors in a tavern?”

We confessed we did not. Madame placed one weary hand on the table. At that moment she seemed tired, bent over with exhaustion and despair. Then she gathered herself, like an army rallying to the colours. Her back was like a ramrod and she stood before us like a general of the guards. Deep worry lines were etched across her face that her rouge could not hide. Crow’s feet sat the corners of her dark eyes. Her hair was wild and unkempt. Still, she looked ravishing despite – or because – of all that. At last, I began to understand why Godebski loved her. She was a force of nature.