Verboom and Dupuy fell quiet, trying to work out the meaning of the Caesarian tale. The room remained silent. Jimmy sent them out with a waft of the hand. Each, a little disoriented, bowed and left the room.
“What did you mean by the parable?” I asked, stepping out from my hiding place.
Jimmy was deep in thought. “Oh, that? No idea. They were about to come to blows, I thought, so why not send them off with something else to think about. Men would rather say nothing and be thought fools than speak and confirm it.” He tossed the message to the ground, looking angry. “You won’t believe what it says.”
It had Philip V’s seal on the paper.
“That’s right, him, the madman crowned out of sheer luck!” he exclaimed. “He writes to offer me the position of commander in chief of all the armies in Spain. Me, a marshal of Louis XIV of France! What kind of offer is this? For me to abandon Louis? In favor of an unshod army of beggars? Why not name me king of the gypsy armies of Hungary?” He screwed up the paper, enraged. “For the love of God! If a person has Homer, why would he choose Virgil?” He began pacing the room, brooding, with the piece of paper in his hand. He had quite enough problems as it was, and whichever way you looked at it, this put him in a tricky position: Saying no to a king is always dangerous.
“And what have you decided about the trenches?” I asked. “Verboom’s or Dupuy’s?”
He continued to think and pace, eyes downcast. My heart began to pound. If ever I have prayed — to God or to le Mystère—it was then: Please, please, choose my trench, my trench, mine.
Jimmy suddenly halted. Eyes still fixed on the floor, he lifted a forefinger toward the ceiling. “Verboom’s. We’ll go with Verboom’s trench. . I’ll reject Philip’s offer, of course,” he said, and with truly regal generosity, elucidating, “which will be a snub, and no mistake. If that comes with word that I’ve also marginalized Verboom, he’ll take it even worse. We’ll begin work as soon as we have all the matériel. Let’s get to it; the sooner we finish with this insane Catalan rabble, the better.”
My dear vile Waltraud has told me to stop — she wants to know about Anfán and Amelis. Fatty Waltraud is concerned: Was I really ready to abandon my nearest and dearest? Was I lying to Jimmy? My answer: No, I wasn’t lying.
Now for something that, on the face of it, will seem incongruous: The highest love is shown by denying that selfsame love. Jimmy was Jimmy — it would have been impossible to lie to him, he’d have picked up on it in a heartbeat. The only way I could hide my feelings from him was simply not to feel them.
If I truly loved them, I was going to have to postpone that love, supplant my feelings. Fleetingly but believably, to be a different person, transfigured. Overlaying one love with another was the only option. And I assure you, it was as difficult, if not more so, than designing my dissembling Attack Trench. Yes, I’ll say it: For a period of forty-eight hours, I surrendered myself. The amount of time needed to dissipate Jimmy’s suspicions. Come the third day, he gave me the gift of a French captain’s uniform.
Everyone knows the old sailors’ saying: A single drop of tar and the whole barrel is corrupt. In the vast Bourbon encampment, I set myself to be that drop. It’s amazing the damage that one man, one single man, can do if he sets his mind to it.
I went around proudly in my new French uniform, from one end of the camp to the other. There are captains and then there are captains, and my uniform was white and brand-new: Longlegs Zuvi, looking fine, teaching the rank and file a thing or two about respect. A captain who looked like something straight out of the salons of Versailles, appearing before the grubby troops, knee-deep in mud, brought low by the yearlong siege. I made a nuisance of myself whenever an opportunity presented itself.
I caught sight of a Navarran recruit with a stupid-looking face. I began lecturing him and, when I had cowed him, led him to the artillery depot. Placing a mallet and a scalpel in his hands, I ordered him to get to work on the cannon vents. This would break them, and they could never be used again, but an order’s an order. In tyrannical armies, soldiers are meek servants. Unlike men in the Coronela, these never questioned their superiors, let alone talked back. I left him to it. He’d be caught and surely hanged for hammering the cannons like that — but by then at least a few cannons would have been put out of action.
Gunpowder is such a precious resource that, usually, you see a guard posted at the store, and nobody is allowed to move it anywhere unless under express orders. But somewhere in a large siege, you’ll always find deposits being moved from one place to another. Should a decent saboteur insert himself in the distribution path, he’ll show his worth, ordering the cannon barrels to be taken to the infantry, and the gunpowder for the rifles to the artillery. My dear vile Waltraud doesn’t understand. Well, yes, if you spend your days boiling cabbages, what would you know about gunpowder? The granulation is different for different weapons — with the wrong powder, the cannonballs shoot all of a foot’s distance, and flintlocks explode, blinding the riflemen. Half a grain of gunpowder is enough to scorch a man’s eye.
It was when I came across an old acquaintance that I really began to enjoy myself: Captain Antoine Bardonenche. It was inevitable that we’d run into each other sooner or later, somewhere in the camp.
“My fine friend, finally, we meet!” he said. “But you’ve been demoted. You were lieutenant colonel under King Charles, and they’ve got you as a captain here.”
“Archduke Charles,” I corrected, fully inhabiting my role as deserter. “Only the rebels call that usurper King.”
“Ah, yes, well, what does it matter?” said Bardonenche, who couldn’t care a pepper about politics. “The point is, we’re both captains now. You must come and dine with me.”
I managed to make some more mischief before the day was out, and when night fell, I didn’t have much choice but to go and join him. It was bittersweet to dine together. The evening concluded over drinks in front of a campfire. The tired blue flames cast a melancholy light on our meeting. The days when we had frolicked around the lakes of Bazoches, alongside Jeanne and her sister, seemed a distant memory.
“Can I admit something to you?” he said, and proceeded with a sentimental nocturnal musing: “I hate this, I hate it all. All these months here, stagnating in this miserable battlefield. Have you ever seen such wretched soldiers? We look like an army of beggars.”
“I always thought you felt at home in war, good or bad.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t war anymore. We’re like wolves, circling around some defenseless prey. There’s neither honor nor dignity in putting these people to the sword.”
Bardonenche had been detailed with protecting the rearguard: whole months escorting supply carts and fighting Miquelets. “Not long ago, near a place called Mataró,” he said, “we set fire to an entire forest and drove out a group we’d cornered in there. How those pines blazed! Crackling like grenades, flames as high as the heavens. I called out to them to give themselves up. I gave them my word, four times, that they wouldn’t be murdered. It was useless.” He paused and then carried on. “When they finally couldn’t take it any longer, they came rushing out. And do you know what? Half of them were human torches. Even so, howling, their flesh on fire, they had only one thought: to come and throw themselves at us, to try and take some of us to the inferno with them. I ran one of them through with my saber. Their captain, I think. Look at this.” He handed me a small leather pouch. “This is what he was carrying. Strange, don’t you think?”