Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

“Oh, don’t worry yourself over that,” Jimmy would say. “You’re rendering far worthier services: making war pleasurable for me.”

At that point, our mutual understanding withered, all the ties that could bind me to him as a man and, especially, as a Maganon. I had erred: People in high office demand everything from those around them, and Jimmy was the most egoistic marshal of all. He used soldiers, engineers, and lovers alike.

He tried to keep me from leaving, began avoiding me. When it comes to powerful men, the best thing is to give them a wide berth: If they grow tall, you will be in their shade, and if they fall, you’ll find yourself crushed underneath. With Jimmy, I was kept quiet by an unfathomable force that also kept us apart: le Mystère . You do not say no to a marshal of France, not to his face, so I limited myself to trying to leave without him noticing.

When spring came, the Franco-Spanish army split into two. One part was to remain under Jimmy’s command, while the other would be led by the duke of Orléans. I asked to be reassigned to the latter’s section. Among aristocracy, the envy of others is much to be desired, so you can imagine Orléans’ satisfaction when I offered him my services. Vauban’s name could move mountains, and Orléans didn’t hesitate to accept me in. Indeed, no doubt rivalry between leaders had an impact, a considerable one: Stealing Berwick’s little apricot would supply Orléans with endless opportunities to lord it over him.

The day before we were set to leave, I received orders to present myself at Jimmy’s field tent. My having “deserted,” gone over to his rival in the Bourbon high command, was doubtless an affront. I knew it and made my way there very reluctantly.

He was sitting, writing something, when I came in. The tent was rectangular and very long. His desk was at the far end, and it was as though he were a spider waiting in its web. He bade his servants leave and, once they had gone, thrust his quill into the inkstand like a knife, saying: “You haven’t even said goodbye.”

I could take refuge in hierarchy for once. I held my nerve, looking straight ahead of me. I spoke in a formal, distant way: “The marshal has sent no order for me to bid him farewell.”

“Enough of the silliness!” he barked. “We’re alone now. And stand at ease. You’re like a pole in the ground.” He handed me some papers. “Read. You’ll be grateful to me all your days.” As though he were doing me a considerable favor, he added: “You’re coming with me. It’s decided.”

It was my appointment as a royal engineer. Or at least a personal petition to the Beast, signed by Jimmy.

This is how powerful people behave. Everything, as far as they’re concerned, is agreed without discussion, and on they go. What I might have to say, my interests, desires, needs, mattered not a jot. But I had been educated at Bazoches, and that was a rampart that not even the duke of Berwick could clear. I interjected: “You can’t appoint me engineer.”

He wasn’t sure how to overcome this resistance, whether to employ threats or seduction, but was too clever to go fully either way. “It will be the king of France doing so,” he said evasively.

“Not even he has the correct authority.” I bared my forearm, showing my five Points. “The king may make what decrees he pleases, but not on my tattoos. You know full well.”

“You want us to disagree. Tell me why.”

I said nothing. I could have hurt him by saying his only authority over me was carnal, or that his spitefulness was the product of wounded vanity. That was how Jimmy was: He thought he had the right to receive love without giving any back. No, I didn’t say a word. What would be the point? It was a good thing I kept quiet: He took my silence harder than any accusation I could have come up with. He realized he was up against a force that was not me but which I was merely representing. He pondered how he might subdue it but was sufficiently intelligent to know it was beyond his powers. He sighed, then barked: “I at least have the right to ask why you don’t want to come with me. I’m more than a marshal to you. Which is why I want you at my side.”

I interjected for the second time, brusquely rebuffing him. “Of course a marshal is what you are.” I looked him in the eye. “Always and wherever. Much as you might want to be, you can’t be anything else.”

I left without being ordered to. He wouldn’t have been able to stop me.

Jimmy, along with half the army, was to go north, and Orléans east, to lay siege to a city named Játiva. Alas, I wasn’t allowed to join Orléans’s troops. As a farewell of his own, Jimmy left me a poisoned gift: a bureaucratic tangle between his secretaries and those of Orléans that would delay my transfer. He did it simply to aggravate me, as it meant I had to stay in Almansa waiting for my new passport to be sorted out. Very nice. The siege of Játiva promised to be quite the spectacle, and there I was, stuck in that godforsaken Albacete pigsty, a place that — among the wounded, monks, reinforcements, and mounds of provisions that were to be sent out to the new battle lines — would have the smell of death about it for a thousand years to come. They say that, on both sides combined, ten thousand poor souls died at Almansa. Ten thousand, when, at a well-directed siege, the marquis had shown a way of losing no more than ten! The slaughter had been such that the inhabitants of the town had to use the wells as graves. They threw the naked bodies in like sacks. Naked, I say, because the people were so miserable that they stripped the belongings of the fallen, right down to their dirty undergarments.

The Word. My mistake had been not learning The Word. What had been the marquis’s question? “Summarize the optimum defense.” The days went by with me stuck in a dust-ridden field tent, and my anxiety grew. More than wanting to, I needed to experience the things I had been taught at Bazoches.

By the time my passport came, Játiva had already fallen into Bourbon hands, but the siege of Tortosa was about to get underway. I shrugged it off: The Word might be found in any siege, I thought. Tortosa was also an extremely interesting prospect. One day a supply convoy set out, and I was allowed to go along.

During the march, an incident occurred that would shatter my musings, which until then had been purely to do with siege warfare. The convoy had to stand aside to allow a crowd coming the opposite way to pass, made up of women, children, and the elderly, all of them dressed in rags and wretched-looking. These individuals were all tinted the same: Their clothes, their faces, their feet as they shuffled by, all took on the same grayish, subdued hue. A flock whose tribulation was plain to see, who, in spite of their numbers, went by in silence. Only the youngest ones were bold enough to shed tears. None even held out a hand for alms. They were being escorted by a few men on horseback who cracked the occasional whip to make them keep up the pace. An old woman fell down directly in front of me, and my natural impulse was to lean over to help her. One of the riders spurred his horse over to us. “Stand away from the rebels.”

“Rebels?” I said in surprise. “Since when have old women been rebels?”

The man came and stood his beast between the old woman and me. A horse’s hooves can be very intimidating, and I took a couple of backward steps.

“Fancy changing direction? We’ve got plenty of room for more!” bellowed the man, deadly serious.

It isn’t exactly prudent to argue with a man who’s armed and on horseback when you yourself are neither of those things. Even so, I made clear what I thought of this villainous bully. He looked at me with his beady rat eyes.