‘Well,’ said Olrik with consideration, ‘I’ve been in service in Venice and I’ve seen service in Prague, too. The only two advantages of the latter is that she’s closer to Berlin and has dryer streets.’ This simple joke heartily amused Bamboche who, in his response, nigh spilled water over us all. ‘But the whores are better-natured in Prague,’ added Herr Olrik as an afterthought, ‘if not so pretty. And cheaper, by my recollection, though I’m not a man as often had to part with silver for a woman’s favours.’
Holding back the remark that, since all men claimed the same thing, it was a wonder how the poor whores managed to keep body and soul together (moreover I preferred courtlier references to the fair sex) I withdrew from the conversation while I shaved off my whiskers with a dry razor, and then clad me in what had become my best: red Nankeen frock-coat, with waistcoat of a slightly paler shade, both held by amethyst buttons, sleek white buckhide breeches which clarified every muscle they covered, fine doeskin riding boots, and atop this a fair peruke in need of dusting but still with a trace of the old-fashioned violet powder I favoured. My linen was crisper than might reasonably be hoped, after its hasty cramming into my bags, and my neck-cloth came to my chin in a fairly decent ruffle.
I was again a dandy to rival Robespierre and with my sword buckled in its undisguised scabbard of royal blue gilded leather, I felt immediately more confident than upon the previous day. The soldiers, however, became less candid and friendly as my dress improved. I quickly mollified them with a wink, that they might guess me a rogue in gentleman’s tailorings and, despite contrary appearances, still one of themselves. I made a sardonic leg which had the older man grinning and the lame boy howling again.
‘One must dress rich to get rich,’ I observed. ‘And a widow who’s not impressed by a rich man’s fortune will frequently have her head turned by a poor man’s breeches.’
‘Aha!’ said Olrik approvingly. ‘So you have a plan to marry for your money?’
‘For my initial capital only.’
Olrik put one red butcher’s hand upon my silken shoulder. ‘Then Prague is, after all, your best choice, brother.’ He stepped back from me, as if I were a painting in a gallery. ‘Those Venetian families are mighty clannish and careful what or whom their fortunes wed. The Bohemians, on the other hand, are always grateful for any attention!’
Gravely I thanked him for his advice and refused offence even when he added in a thoughtful tone: ‘Ye’d have to be able to use that odd-looking blade in Venice, whereas the Praguers are impressed merely by a flash of steel.’
It was on my tongue’s tip to take exception to this and boast of my Tatar training, but it would have shown poor taste other than to bow again, thank him graciously and find some token compliment in return. This latter proved unnecessary, for just then his attention was distracted by noises from outside and below us.
Olrik cocked an ear. It was the sound of booted feet and the jangling of a great many harnesses. I knew the signature of regular cavalry and could guess its identity. I picked up my saddlebags and descended the narrow stair to the first landing. Through a window I looked down into the innyard. The coach I had passed that night was being prepared for the road. I saw a pretty little lady’s maid step in, her quick smile unreturned by the dour coachman who did not look quite such a sinister monster as he had in the gloom. On the coach’s door I could now distinguish a discreet coat-of-arms which looked vaguely Oriental and was not at all familiar. I guessed the coach’s occupants to have reached the inn soon after me and gone immediately to their chambers. I now hoped I had been wrong in my opinion I had heard hussars. Several sturdy fellows standing near the coach wore dark coats and were heavily armed. All had a French appearance but it was easily possible they were royalists turned brigand. However, I was swiftly informed of the truth when their leader emerged from the doorway below my feet. I saw only his back at first. He was tall and slender, his left arm bandaged inside his half-buttoned military coat. His tone was arrogant and impatient and I recognised it. Robert de Montsorbier had divested himself of his tricolour sash and, I guessed, was making no claims to represent the French government. He turned to speak to an ostler coming up behind him. Montsorbier’s face was pale and set in harsh lines. ‘Prove it? Prove that my own horse belongs to me? Bah!’ He had evidently found his stolen Spaniard.
Without a horse, I was afraid I should find escape impossible. Nonetheless I crept down the remaining flight of stairs, entered the kitchen, found it deserted, picked up some cold pork and cheese, then returned to the stair to find a window where I could gain intelligence of Montsorbier’s position. I had reached a higher landing when I was alarmed by a sweet voice speaking with great merriment from above.
‘What, Sir? Can’t pay the tally?’
I turned with thudding heart, barely remembering to hold the food away from my Nankeen coat. Half in shadow, half in a beam of Winter sunlight, stood a figure of the most striking good looks I had ever beheld. I could not initially be sure if it were youth or maiden, until she moved further into the light and I realised she wore skirts. Her head was large and almost negroid, though her complexion was fair; her dark eyes were huge and her wonderful face was framed by brown curls. It was her broad shoulders and slim waist which gave her a slightly masculine look. Here was a woman with whom I could immediately fall in love! She embodied, in flesh and blood, the ideal of whom I still occasionally dreamed.
I paused, chewing slowly on a bit of tough pork crackling, and stared at her. Then I recovered my good manners enough to bend my body like a gallant of old and (a Tatar gesture which stood me well in the West) salaamed to indicate that I was at her service.
I hoped she might be enchanted and it was true she seemed pleased by me, but she lost none of her clear-eyed assessment of my person. ‘Must I pay your reckoning for you, Sir? You are clearly a gentleman and I would not see you so demeaned as this!’
The crackling secreted in my hand, I shook my head. ‘You misunderstand, Madam. I’m pursued by enemies – king-slayers who’ll kill me if I do not immediately escape them. I could fight half their number, but these are too many.’
‘You’re a scallawag then, Sir? And those dutiful bully-boys who peer with such rudeness into my private carriage, are they policemen?’
‘No, Marm. They serve the Public Safety Committee of France and I’m wanted as a royalist.’
She absorbed this information, nodding to herself. She began to button up her coat, which was cut like a man’s hunting jerkin, and to pull on long gloves as if she prepared for a day’s hunting. ‘What’s their leader named?’
‘Robert de Montsorbier, Marm. But no threat can frighten him, no gold can pay him. He puts duty first and mercy a poor second.’
‘I know his kind. I, by the by, Sir, am called Libussa, Duchess of Crete.’
The house was unknown to me, but it should have my loyalty for ever! Her bones seemed delicate but were strong and large. Her skin looked soft as fine silk and glowed with health, a kind of wholesome fieriness which spoke of great strength of soul and of purpose. Her face, so serious in repose, so bright when lit by a witty retort, was exquisite. She truly could have been the Goddess of Reason come down to Earth. So struck was I by her beauty and character that I checked my usual responses, the kind I would normally make to a pretty woman. Where otherwise I might have played amusing fop and plotted conquest, I could conceive of no game in which this fair madonna would not easily best me. I wished to have her respect more than I wished for anything in the world, so I merely presented myself, giving name and title, then stating my business and intentions.
‘You’ll require a friend to distract ’em while you escape, eh, Sir?’ says she.
‘Aye, Madam, ’twould be of great help.’
‘Then get you as close as you can to the stables, Sir.’
I obeyed. I could have done nought else. I was mesmerised by her. Republican feet stamped upon the landlord’s gravy-stained boards. I fled to the back cloakroom, beco
ming lost in a collection of clothing which stank of every animal under the sun (but chiefly of man), yet could still hear my benefactress addressing the Frenchers with haughty impatience.
Montsorbier’s retort was swift:
‘We seek a common horse thief, Marm, ’tis all. Should you come upon a little, blown-up gamecock of a fellow, either wearing a coat two sizes too big or breeches one size too small, I’d thank you for giving us word of him.’
It was all I could do to stop myself from springing from my hiding place there and then and tearing his throat out with my own teeth. It was no comfort to me that his insults were the result of my having bested him so thoroughly the day before!
My Libussa’s tone was now placatory and charming. ‘Indeed, Sir? Might his name have been von Bek?’
‘So he styles himself, aye.’
‘Why, I saw him off last night. So that horse was not his own! Lud, Sir, and such a fine dapple. A half-Arab, I’d swear.’
‘Fresh horse,’ said Montsorbier, taking her red herring. ‘Which way, Marm, did the villain ride?
‘I cannot recall, Sir. My impression was that he travelled in our direction, however. Aye, I’d swear it. He said something of risking the danger alone. Well, Sir, that’s the Lausanne road, of course. Since you’ll be going in that direction, I take it you’ll be kind enough to give us escort. At least part-way, Sir? The pass is famous for its brigands, is it not?’
‘We chase von Bek.’ Montsorbier then addressed one who was evidently the innkeeper. ‘You dog – why did you not say he’d taken another mount?’
‘I saw none missing, Sir.’ The innkeeper’s voice quavered. ‘A dapple, you say, Madam? Perhaps, then, ’tis the property of one of the priests?’ I heard them all tramp out of the inn and enter the front yard. Creeping from the closet I peered through a shutter onto the yard itself just as the two Helvetian Knights-at-Arms swaggered in view, all jutted scabbards and pistolled cross-belts, bits of leather and metal here and there almost at random upon their persons. Olrik sniffed and glanced challengingly at Montsorbier. ‘The dapple, Captain, was my beast.’
The innkeeper was taken aback. ‘Yours was a roan, surely? I took her in myself!’
‘The dapple, too, fool!’ Olrik should have been a mummer in a pantomime, with his exaggerated gestures. ‘With the packs! The boy, here, was leading her. Bamboche. Now you remember, eh?’
In baffled defeat, the landlord acquiesced.
Olrik next strode up to Montsorbier, glaring directly into the angry Frenchman’s face. Olrik spoke with measured insolence. ‘What company d’ye serve? Not cavalry by your rig and not infantry by your boots and arsenal. Ye’ve the smell of Frenchies to me. But what sort of Frenchy? Aristo? Or regicide? ’Tis plain ye ain’t Confederation fellows.’
I realised Olrik performed this charade in order to benefit me, to confuse the pursuer.
‘I’m Swiss as you, Sir,’ muttered Montsorbier, sensing a ploy but uncertain as to its nature. ‘Now, Sir, you say this rogue took your dapple? A mare, was it?’
‘Liar!’ Olrik puffed himself up, rattling gorget and creaking harness. ‘Liar, I say, Sir! Ye’re no Switzer!’
‘From Berne,’ said Montsorbier in a small, terrible voice.
Olrik looked the enraged Montsorbier up and down, took a bend to one side, then to the other, arms akimbo. These were all the familiar tricks of a belligerent professional duellist and to be sure Montsorbier recognised them as well as I. But he refused the bait. He held his ground, face and neck bright red on his thin dark body, like a bloodied spear topped by a black shield. He hated Olrik but could not be sure how many comrades the mercenary could call upon, and he wanted no extra trouble since he was illegally in Switzerland.
‘Where’s your papers, Frenchy?’ demanded the Swiss bravo.
‘I’m on a private mission, Sir, and have no wish to fight a fellow soldier.’ Montsorbier gritted fine white teeth so hard I thought I’d hear them crumble to powder. ‘We hunt the man who stole your horse. He’s sought in France for treason. Posted in Russia for an assassin. A rogue, through and through, Sir.’
‘Of which there are none in all the Helvetian republics, as you’d know if you were true Swiss. What’s this fellow really stolen, Sir?’ Olrik put his sinister, amiable face on one side.
‘Your damned horse, Sir, for a beginning!’ Montsorbier’s temper released itself in a sound like steel leaving leather.
‘What, the roan?’
Montsorbier turned to look at his uncertain followers. They seemed embarrassed, yet were hiding some amusement.
Young Bamboche limped back into my picture. Evidently he had returned from the stableyard. ‘Someone’s taken the dapple!’ His loud exclamation was so melodramatic he might have been another actor in the Italian Comedy. What was plain to me, however, was not plain to Montsorbier who had never served in the ranks nor got himself drunk with those who did. Bamboche was performing a ritual, old soldier style, which in itself was the normal preparation for a brawl.
‘Why’d the German take your horse, comrade?’ Bamboche looked this way and that, then fixed a glare upon Montsorbier. ‘Is this gentleman involved?’
‘He’s a French notary, apparently,’ said Olrik with feigned patience. ‘He claims my dapple’s stolen by von Bek, who is like a brother to us!’
Bamboche turned round eyes upwards, questioning Montsorbier. ‘You say, Sir, you saw Captain von Bek riding my comrade’s horse? When was this, Sir?’
‘That was not my exact accusation.’ Montsorbier was cold now.
Bamboche looked at Olrik. ‘When did you find the horse gone?’
‘I did not. The Frenchy says the roan’s gone, too! Go to the stable and see.’ Olrik fixed Montsorbier with a stern glare. For my part, I’d fear for the Swiss if he and the other were matched in different circumstances. But the farce continued to be played through and My Lady Libussa and her maid looking on as if in a box at the Opera.
Montsorbier was hating being made to seem such a fool. He breathed slowly and looked hard at his turned-back cuffs, plucked at frogging, put the heel of his boot in slushy dirt and ground it as if crushing vermin. But all this while every individual in the yard understood that the tension could snap and bloody swordplay become the order of the day.
Raising a fresh-trimmed brow, my lady pouted to display a patch and this gesture filled me with shivering lust such as I had not known since Catherine used me in her game with Prince Pushkin, when I was young enough to thrill at any promise, being barely seventeen summers. But this excelled all previous sensation, even the episode with the Delaware woman I alluded to in my previous memoir. Blood! If this witch could move me with a smile, what ecstasies could her touch command? I was already Cupid’s most abject slave. I dared not let myself speculate upon my chances of winning this lady’s favours for I was already threatened by the madness of Eros, as if a love-potion and a remedy for failing ardour had been fed to me both at once. I was a man of Reason, said I to myself: a Cynic (though not the libertine of repute) who planned to marry a plain, rich woman and so found a great fortune. Yet I hoped that I had intrigued the lady, at very least. I had an undeserved reputation little short of Casanova’s and sometimes this attracted women, particularly those who felt secure in their circumstances. The fact was that I knew little of the Empress’s charms. I had been a pawn in some plot which doubtless had little point. Had I indeed been everything my legend credited me as being, I might doubtless be dead. Catherine rewarded discarded lovers, it was said, with icy death under her balcony. She was famous for her Pomeranian thrift.
Back came Olrik’s loader. His tone was baffled and accusatory. ‘The roan’s in her stable! Not even saddled!’
‘So she can’t be stole,’ said Olrik reasonably. ‘You call a man Thief unjustly, Sir.’ Now he blossomed in his rôle, almost grinning at the furious Montsorbier. ‘No Swiss, no Swiss man of honour that is, no Swiss of any character at all, no Swiss person, however mean his station, would wish to be guil
ty of breaking the fifth (or is it the eighth?) Commandment. Are you satisfied, therefore, that the matter’s settled, Sir? Shall you skulk back to your Democracy, Sir, and inform Monsieur Robespierre that you’ve accused a man wrongly?’
‘He stole my horse,’ said Montsorbier. Accustomed always to having his way, to winning all arguments, to riding through all defences, he had not the sense to drop the debate there and then. ‘He stole my horse not twenty miles from here. At carbine-point. I was shot by him and his company, Sir. Now play no more with me. I see you’re a well-meaning fellow and you think you do right, but be assured, von Bek’s a thief and a ruffian who wants a smart hanging.’
‘The black hunter was stolen?’ asked Bamboche, his blue eyes still wider, in fine imitation of bumpkin simplicity. He should not be a soldier, thought I: he should be performing Molière. ‘The black horse, Sir? Big Spaniard, Sir? Saddle of fine Moorish-work? Madrid-style? Brass irons?’
Montsorbier saw what was planned. ‘Very well. I’ll accept your verdict. I know my horse is here.’
‘A true Democrat, Sir. But look you, these priests may have a vote. What do you vote, brothers? Is von Bek a thief?’
The old, tonsured, dried-up Father Sebastian mumbled as he lurked back in the shadows of the gables.
The City in the Autumn Stars Page 6