Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

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?”

I opened it, finding it full of bullets. A number had flecks of dried blood on them.

“Do you believe in destiny?” he asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Nor do I. But it so happens that there are nineteen bullets there, and I in my time have killed nineteen men, in duels or in battle.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I ran my saber through his chest, right up to the hilt. The look on his face — it had to be seen to be believed. He tried to say something to me with his last breath. I couldn’t make it out.”

“Doubtless he was cursing you.”

Bardonenche turned to look at the fire again. “Yes, most likely.”

“Tiredness” and “Bardonenche” were two words that didn’t usually go together. But he seemed exhausted that night, hugging his knees, Busquets’s pouch held in one hand. Busquets, the Miquelet captain I met during the expedition, the one who was so intent on liberating Mataró. His superstition was that he wouldn’t die until that pouch was full. It seemed Saint Peter had finally opened his gates.

“Why hold on to such a macabre keepsake?” I said, gazing at the pouch as though it were a crystal ball.

“I don’t know,” he said, groaning. “I feel as though it belongs to me now. I’ve tried to get rid of it, but I can’t.”

I smiled incredulously. “Can’t? I’ll take it from you if you like.”

He shook his head once more. “Why could anyone possibly want to carry around a pouch of used bullets?”

“No idea,” I said, sighing. “Perhaps the man wanted his killer to have it. Or perhaps it’s something more sinister.”

“More sinister?”

I tried to put myself in a Miquelet’s shoes. “When the Miquelets find a Frenchman or a Spaniard with a rifle whose flint is Catalan, or a sword with a Catalan coat of arms on the cuff, they execute their prisoner using that same stolen weapon. The owner’s name is sewn onto the pouch—‘Jaume Busquets, capitá .’ If any friends of the dead man were to capture you, they’d make you swallow the contents. That’s their way.”

The moment I’d spoken, I regretted it. Saying anything cruel to Bardonenche was akin to being nasty to a child, for all that the man was the best swordsman in Europe. Needing to get back to the Guinardó house, I stood up.

“My fine friend,” said Bardonenche, bidding me farewell without getting up, “it’s wonderful you’re serving with us. Do you know what I mean? I’ve thought on more than one occasion, Dear Lord, if this carries on to the bitter end, there’s the chance you’re going to have to kill your Bazoches companion.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “Antoine,” I mused aloud, “it could be that things are a little more complicated than our parents and teachers told us.”

The clearsightedness of his answer, when usually, he was so puerile, took me aback. “That would be very sad,” he said. “Our love for our betters would mean we’ve embraced lies. But as good sons and good students, what choice did we have?” In a funereal tone, he added: “I have no desire to kill you.”

This sent chills through me; perhaps he wasn’t as clueless as he seemed. Our friendship, perhaps, meant he was able to deduce various things. Including the fact that a “rebel” lieutenant colonel, so committed to the defense of his own city, would not so easily switch sides. Perhaps Bardonenche demonstrated the most generous kind of friendship that night: to not betray the traitor.