by Leo Perutz
The young count lingered in the tap-room over a jug of wine, alone except for an old man, the landlord’s father, who lay snoring on the bench beside the stove. Rain pattered against the windows, blazing logs hissed and crackled, and pots and pans clattered in the kitchen, where the landlord’s wife was preparing a supper of Nuremberg sausage for the coachman and the lackey.
The count, who had no wish to retire so early and hankered after a game of ombre, wondered if there were a couple of gentlemen of quality in the neighbourhood with whom he could play. He was debating this question, elbows on knees and chin in hands, when there was a commotion outside. He cocked his head and listened, fancying that he had heard one of his men, the coachman or the lackey, utter a cry for help. Just then the landlord came hurrying out of the kitchen, pale with fright. He was about to say something when the door burst open and a peremptory voice broke in.
“Messieurs! Stay precisely where you are.”
The masked figure of the robber captain was standing on the threshold with three companions at his back, one of them red-haired.
The young Bohemian nobleman remained calmly seated behind his jug of wine. It occurred to him that, if these were indeed the Desecrators of whom he had heard so much, a cool head might not only save his skin but preserve the thirty Bohemian ducats he carried in his purse. Determined to emerge from this encounter with credit, so as to be able to boast of it later at the university in Rostock, he bolstered his courage by draining four glasses of wine in quick succession.
Meanwhile, the robber captain had entered the tap-room. He gave a little bow and raised his hat to the count, then called for wine and drank it out of a silver goblet which one of his companions produced from a saddlebag.
The landlord stood there trembling in every limb, so frightened that the pitcher of wine nearly slipped through his fingers.
“What do you want?” he demanded with an effort. “I cannot give you shelter, as you must surely know.”
“Fiddlesticks,” the robber captain told him. “Be off with you. Hurry to the kitchen and see if there’s some bread and fried bacon and small beer for my comrades.”
Having draped his cloak over the back of a chair, he was now standing there in a shabby coat of purple velvet and turndown riding boots. His companions had seated themselves at a table near the stove, all save the one with red hair, who remained at his side.
He turned to the young nobleman and raised his hat a second time.
“I regret that circumstances should have compelled me to intrude on you unannounced,” he said courteously, “but the wind from Poland is bitter today, and I had no wish to abandon my companions in the freezing rain.”
“A question, by your leave,” said the count. “What has happened to my companions? I heard them cry out. And kindly remove your mask, sir, so that I may see your face.”
The robber stared at him in silence for a moment.
“May God in his mercy preserve you from that sight,” he said at length. “As to your servants, they’ve retired to the cow-shed, but never fear, my own people will spare no effort to serve your noble person in every respect.”
And he indicated the two men sitting apart at their table.
The young count noted to his surprise that the captain of the Desecrators was at pains to imitate the speech and manner of a nobleman. He thought it wise to be equally polite, if only for the sake of the gold in his purse, so he rose, hat in hand, and invited the redoubtable man to join him at his table for a glass of wine.
The robber seemed to deliberate for a moment. Then he said, “In response to your courteous invitation, sir, I can only say that I consider myself unworthy of such an honour. If you insist, however, I’ll gladly drink your health.”
But it was Red Lisa who first raised her glass when the three of them were seated together at the count’s table, and she drained it–as she had been wont to do with Black Ibitz–to the Devil.
“No blasphemy,” the robber told her sternly, “you’re in respectable company.”
“The young lady wears male attire and carries a sword,” the count began. “Is that the custom hereabouts?”
“No,” the robber replied. “She dresses like a man because it enables her to sit a horse better, and the sword is no plaything–she knows how to wield it. When she draws it, she does so pour se battre bravement et pour dornner de bons coups.”
“I myself have been to Paris,” the count remarked, crossing his legs with a jingle of spurs. “I’ve seen the Louvre and the king’s new pleasure palace.”
“I cannot say the same,” said the robber. “My French was taught me by my comrade there. It flows from his lips like water.” He pointed over his shoulder at the Brabanter, who was seated at the other table with Wryneck, wolfing fried bacon.
“Will you be staying the night here?” inquired the count, anxious not to let the conversation flag.
“No,” the robber replied, “I must ride on. I have business to attend to not far from here.”
“In that case,” said the count, “I’ll drink to its successful conclusion.”
“Kindly refrain, sir,” the robber enjoined him. “If you wish a fisherman luck before he sails, he fails.”
“How can you fail?” Red Lisa broke in. “You have the arcanum on you, and that will prevail over anything, however strong.”
“Hush!” the robber said angrily. “You talk too much. I’ve told you often enough: what the mouth blabs, the neck pays for.” He readdressed himself to the young nobleman. “My property is scattered about the countryside. To gather it in, I have to ride far and wide.”
“And what form does your business take, sir, if I may make so bold?”
“You will divine its nature,” came the imperturbable response, “if I tell you that I’m known hereabouts as ‘the Desecrator.’”
The count cast courtesy to the winds and jumped up. Although he had known from the first who the stranger was, it stung him to hear the truth so brazenly proclaimed. “Have you no shame?” he demanded, thumping the table with his fist.
“I feel neither shamed nor disgraced,” the robber replied calmly. “If it has pleased Almighty God to make me what I am, how should a speck of dust like myself oppose His divine will?”
“Then it will also please God to have you hanged or broken on the wheel in due time,” said the count, whose glasses of wine were beginning to go to his head, “and that will be the end of you.”
“Not necessarily,” the robber told him. “King David, too, was a great sinner, yet he died in great esteem.”
“You have a slippery tongue, by heaven!” the count cried indignantly. “You make my head spin, you and your King David, but one thing’s true, and I’ve often thought of it. Why didn’t God make all men Christians? Why are there so many Turks and Jews in the world? It oughtn’t to be so.”
“Perhaps God has no wish to see too many people in heaven,” the robber hazarded. “Methinks He would rather see them far away in hell than close to Him in heaven. What good can He expect of them? When men numbered only four they sought to kill each other, and they’ll behave no differently up there.”
“Enough of your preaching,” said the count. “There are ten thousand reichsthalers on your head, and the man that brings you in alive will be granted a manorial estate.”
“True enough,” the robber conceded, “but know this, sir: the hare is never swifter than when hunted, and the net that will trap me has yet to be woven.”
“Indeed?” cried the count, whose head was beginning to buzz with wine. “Well, I shall know you again when next I see you. You’re done for. The executioner’s axe is hovering above your head like the sword of that ancient king whose name I’ve forgotten. My tutor knows, but he’s asleep upstairs. Damnation, why wouldn’t he play ombre? We could play three-handed now.”
“You say you’d know me again?” the robber asked thoughtfully.
“Indeed I would, par le sang de Dieu!” declared the count. “What’s more, I
’ll wager two Bohemian ducats on it.”
“Two ducats are little enough,” said the robber. “I accept your wager.”
“Then the money’s as good as mine,” the count exclaimed with an exultant laugh. “I’ve an excellent memory for faces.” And he reached across the table, quick as lightning, and snatched the mask of black cloth from the robber’s face.
A sudden hush descended on the room, broken only by the clatter of Wryneck’s knife as he dropped it on his plate. The robber captain stood up. The face he never wanted seen was pale and grew still paler, but his expression remained as bold and undaunted as ever.
“You’ve won your wager most commendably, sir,” he said, smiling. “Here’s the money.”
He took two ducats from his pocket and tossed them on the table. The count picked them up and held them in his hand, palm upward. He seemed to have recovered his wits, as if a trifle alarmed by his own temerity.
“Now that it’s time for us to part, however,” the robber went on, “—time for me to go and you to stay–I think we should drink a farewell glass together for friendship’s sake.” He raised his goblet. “Your health, sir!”
“And long life!” the count added thickly. He raised his glass and put it to his lips, not seeing that Red Lisa had drawn a small pistol and shaken powder into the pan.
The shot rang out before he had emptied his glass. He sank back in his chair with a gentle sigh. The blood drained from his cheeks, his head sagged, his limp hands relaxed. The glass fell to the floor and smashed, the two coins went rolling across the room.
The robber captain stood there motionless for a while, inhaling the scent of powdersmoke. Then he picked up his mask.
“I wonder if he knew he had to die,” he mused, glancing at the dead man.
“I think he knew it at the very last moment,” said Red Lisa, “but I gave him no time to call out a ‘Lord Jesus.’ I’m sorry for him–he was a lively lad. That’s not the end of it, though. I must prime my pan again, for there’s another over yonder who has seen your face.”
And she levelled her pistol at the old man on the bench beside the stove, who had awoken and was now sitting up, smiling foolishly.
The robber captain swiftly hid his face behind the mask.
“God have mercy!” he cried. “Isn’t one enough? What am I to do with an old man? He became embroiled in this affair through no fault of his own. Am I expected to murder him?”
“Please yourself,” said Red Lisa, “but if die he must, don’t keep him waiting too long for the bullet. Fear is at its worst in the face of death.”
“An old man,” the robber captain groaned, how can I bring myself to murder an old man? I cannot, but what’s the answer?”
“I’ll do it for you if I must,” Wryneck told him, “but give the landlord a coin for the burial and the saying of a Mass.”
“He cannot be left alive,” the robber captain said at length, “though it comes hard, God knows. Summon the landlord, one of you.”
The landlord crossed himself on seeing the dead man. When he heard that his father, too, must die, he went down on his knees, begging for mercy and beating his breast.
“It’s no use,” the robber captain told him. “I’m sorry, God knows, but he must die. Go bid him farewell.”
“What harm has he done you?” the landlord wailed. “Take pity on him. Is your heart so hard that nothing will dissuade you? He’s my father. Were I not so wretchedly poor, I would ransom him from you.”
“It’s a misfortune,” said the robber, deeply moved by the landlord’s lamentations, “but the thing has happened and cannot be undone. He saw my face, which I ordinarily conceal behind this mask. I cannot ride off and leave him alive.”
The landlord got to his feet. He looked at the old man seated on the bench beside the stove, who was staring into space as if he had no notion of what was going on around him.
“How can he have seen you,” the landlord protested, “when he has been blind as a mole these twelve years past? I even have to guide his spoon to the plate, yet you claim he saw your face.”
He slumped into a chair, buried his face in his hands, and began to laugh with wild, shrill abandon.
The robber captain stood there in silence for a moment. Then he went over to the stove and, in one swift movement, thrust his pistol in the old man’s face. There was no reaction; not a muscle even twitched. The rheumy eyes remained fixed on a shadowy corner of the tap-room.
“He’s truly blind!” the robber exclaimed, and lowered his pistol. “I’m absolved, heaven be praised! Enough of that laughter, landlord! Your father may live, and I’m glad of it.” He turned to the others. “And now, mount up. We’ve wasted too much time as it is.”
The landlord continued to sit there, still laughing.
As soon as the robbers had ridden off, the landlord returned to the tap-room to find his father crawling about on all fours.
“Well,” he demanded, “did you see his face? Cease your antics. On your feet and tell me. You’re blind no longer.”
“Now that I’m rich,” said the old man, rising slowly to his feet, “I’ll not share my wealth with you. You’ve always kept me short of food and clothing, never treated me as a good son should. I told you so often enough, but
“You saw him?” the landlord broke in. “You’d know him again?”
“No,” mumbled the old man, “I had no time to look at him.”
“You had no time? What the devil do you mean?”
“I had no time to look,” the old man repeated stubbornly. “I awoke when they shot him”–he indicated the dead youth “and the pieces of gold went rolling across the floor. They’re mine now, for I watched where they went and took care they didn’t escape me. One of them I saw disappear into a crack in the corner, so that one I was sure of, and another rolled toward me under the bench, so I quickly put my foot on it and didn’t budge. There may have been three, though. I must go on looking.”
“Who cares if there were twenty, you old fool!” the landlord shouted. “We’ve lost ten thousand reichsthalers, don’t you understand? It never comes twice in a lifetime, a stroke of good fortune like that!”
Furiously, he slammed the door behind him and went to fetch the coachman and the lackey from the cow-shed so that they could keep vigil over their master till morning.
The Desecrators undertook their last robbery on the Monday after Passion Sunday in spring of the year 1702. The place was a church near Militsch celebrated for the heavy gold cross above the high altar. The venture misfired because the parish priest, on his bishop’s advice, had some weeks earlier removed the ancient crucifix to Militsch Castle for safekeeping and replaced it with a wooden Christ of mediocre workmanship.
The robbers were seen climbing empty handed out of the church window by a farmer who had risen in the middle of the night to tend a sick cow. Without stopping to dress, he ran to Bafron Manor in his nightshirt and raised the alarm. Herr von Bafron, who was still awake and sitting at cards, mustered such of his people as were to hand or could be speedily summoned: farmhands, charcoal-burners, household servants, and huntsmen.
They were too late, however. As soon as they knew themselves to be in danger, the robbers had followed their usual procedure and scattered to the four winds, each making for the Polish border by a different route. Thus, although their pursuers patrolled every road and combed every wood in the neighbourhood, not a member of the band was intercepted. All that came to light was a sack dropped by the robbers in the course of their headlong flight. It contained some bread and onions, a small bag of coarse salt, and several molars wrapped in a cloth–presumably relics from some previously looted church.
Next morning the Bloody Baron arrived with a detachment of dragoons from his quarters in the little town of Trachenburg. Having four months earlier returned to Silesia from fighting the Turks in Hungary, he had promptly resumed his campaign against the robbers with all the perseverance of a bloodhound. He flew into a rage on being told t
hat a mendicant friar in a brown habit had been detained not far from the Polish frontier but subsequently released, for he knew that one of the Desecrators had sometimes employed that disguise. The only person he himself encountered on the road that day was a Swedish courier riding toward Trachenburg at dawn with his official leather pouch. This man, who addressed him as “Cousin” and exchanged a few words in Swedish and French, had impressed him as wholly unsuspicious because envoys from the King of Sweden were to be found on every road in Silesia and Pomerania.
Such was the outcome of the Desecrators’ last robbery, and nothing more was heard of them until, some time during the week after Easter, the rumour first arose that they were no more.
Somewhere in the Polish forests–so the story ran–they had quarrelled while sharing out their spoils and set upon each other with knives and muskets. Three of them were killed on the spot and the survivors had ridden off into the blue with their stolen gold. Among the dead was their leader.
The rumour spread like wildfire. Waggoners proclaimed it in passing to reapers at work in the fields, parish priests wove it into their sermons, and there were some who claimed to have seen the robbers’ corpses with their own eyes. Everyone was overjoyed that the deplorable state of affairs had been brought to an end, and the robber captain’s wretched demise became the subject of a printed ballad sung at fairs and in taverns.
But there was one person who refused to believe the tale, namely, the Bloody Baron, who scoffed at it and called it an imposture. The robbers, he declared, had put it about that their leader was six feet under the sod. Why? So that people would give up looking for the man and leave him to enjoy his ill-gotten gains in peace. The Bloody Baron swore by the Devil’s claws, tail and horns that he would never rest and never know a day’s peace of mind until he had marched the Desecrators and their captain to the gallows.
Nothing more was heard of them, however. No more churches or chapels were robbed, and such of their treasures as remained intact continued to gleam and glint in the many-hued twilight admitted by their stained-glass windows. No thieving hand was ever laid upon them.