LEGEND
The Captain of Artillery
RESTAUR VAX SENT letters to Bishop Pango, saying, ‘Now I hold Potok, and all Varina north of the Danube. Soon the Turk will come against me with armies, and to fight them I must have cannon, and also a Captain of Artillery to teach us the use of them. I have money from the merchants of Potok, and can pay well.’
Winter fell, with great snows, and there came in secret to Restaur Vax one who said he had fought in the French Wars as a Captain of Artillery. He was small of stature, and slim, like a boy before manhood. He studied the land and said, ‘For mountains such as these you must have mule-guns, which may be carried by goat-paths and the paths of the hunter, and with those you will fall on the Turk unawares. Such guns I can supply, and then teach your people the use of them. Now let us make terms.’
Restaur Vax said, ‘It must be done quickly, for when the snows melt the Turk will come, and our need will be great.’
The Captain of Artillery said, ‘Then I will bring your guns under wool-packs on a barge, down the Danube. Tell me of a place where there is a quay with good landing.’
Restaur Vax said, ‘We hold Slot, which has a deep-water quay where many barges load and unload, for there are merchants there to whom our people sell stuff that they have made in the winter.’
‘So be it,’ said the Captain of Artillery. ‘My price is seven hundred kronin, half now that I may buy the guns, with shot and powder, and half when I bring them.’
Then the Kas Kalaz, who was there, said, ‘These terms are too hard. How shall we trust this little foreigner? He will take the money and we shall not see him again.’
And so said others. But Restaur Vax said, ‘Trust him we must, for we have no other help. What else will you do with the money? Will you melt it into gold bullets and fire them at the Turk? Moreover, small though he is, he has the look of honour.’
The Captain of Artillery departed. Winter gripped the land, so that the Danube froze and no traffic could pass. While the ice was yet solid the Turk crossed the river with armies and cannon, and captured Slot. At that Restaur Vax sent letters to the Captain of Artillery in Vienna appointing another place, but the messenger was eaten by wolves, so that the Captain of Artillery did not learn of the need to change plan.
Then a message came from the Captain of Artillery to Restaur Vax saying, ‘The river melts, and the river-traffic is moving. Your guns are laden and ready. We wait only for the powder. Be at Slot on the day appointed. You will know my barge by a yellow standard.’
Then some said, ‘He does not know that the Turk has taken Slot. We must look for fresh cannon elsewhere.’
But Restaur Vax said, ‘There is no time. Take my horse, Lash, and ride by the river till you see a barge with a yellow standard and hail it, and tell the Captain of Artillery what has befallen.’
This Lash did, and found the barge, but it could not come near the shore because there were shoals, so he set the horse into the water and though he did not himself know how to swim, he held to the harness and so came to the barge, and bade the horse swim back to the shore and return to Restaur Vax. By this Restaur Vax knew that the barge was found.
Meanwhile Restaur Vax had sent through the hills and gathered from many houses the hangings1 that the people had made in the winter. On the day appointed he came with eighty men, all weaponless and in the likeness of farmers, to Slot. By twos and threes they came, driving mules laden with hangings, and gathered at the quay where the merchants bought. And at the same time the Kas Kalaz and all the others lay in hiding round Slot, having set a man to watch for the barge with the yellow standard.
When it was seen the man fired his musket as a signal, and then the Kas Kalaz and the others rose up from their places of hiding and fired on the walls, as if they would attack the town. At that the bazouks who guarded the quay ran to the walls to defend the place. Then Restaur Vax and his men took their weapons from among the hangings and seized the quay, and on the barge the Captain of Artillery held a pistol to the steersman’s head and told him what he must do, while Lash the Golden carried up from the hold two guns, the barrels being of such weight that two ordinary men could not have lifted them. These he assembled and loaded, as the Captain of Artillery had shown him.
Then the barge came to the quayside and the guns were carried ashore and made ready, the Captain of Artillery standing by one and Lash by the other, while the rest of the guns were brought up from under the bales and set upon the mules. And now the Turks, seeing what was afoot, returned to the quayside, many hundred bazouks, but the way was narrow and the Captain of Artillery fired with his cannon into the mass of them, as did Lash in his turn (this having been shown him too by the Captain of Artillery as they came down the river), and there was great slaughter and the Turks fled.
So the guns were brought out through the town, but the bazouks upon the walls fired hotly at them as they passed under the gate, and the Captain of Artillery was struck in the side and fell down with a great cry. Thus his hat fell from his head and the long hair which had been hidden beneath the hat streamed down, and all saw that it was not a man, but a woman of great beauty, like the mother of St Valia, but that her hair was as red as a cloud at sunset.2
They set her on a mule and fled and took her to a farm above Drogo where lived a woman skilled in herbs, who washed and bandaged the wound and declared that she would yet live.
But the chieftains came to Restaur Vax and said, ‘When she is recovered she must be sent away. We cannot fight with a woman among us.’
Restaur Vax said, ‘She is our Captain of Artillery, and where shall we find us another before the Turk is on us?’
Then Lash the Golden said, ‘To fight beside a woman is not honourable. Our courage will be less.’
But Restaur Vax said, ‘I did not see that your courage or your honour were less when you fought beside her on the quay at Slot. And who taught you the management of cannon?’
1 Weaving hangings in elaborate geometrical patterns is a traditional winter occupation among Varinian peasants. They are then sold at riverside markets in the spring, when the Danube melts.
2 Marie McMahon (1779?–1841) is a historical figure. Half-French and half-Irish, she disguised herself as a man and followed her lover into the French army. After he was killed at Jena she continued to serve, though not apparently quite undetected as she seems to have borne at least three children on various campaigns. Her highly unreliable memoirs (Paris 1835) represent her as having been a great beauty in her youth. By the time of her exploits in Varina she must have been around forty-five. Several observers remark on the striking colour of her hair.
AUGUST 1990
ST JOSEPH’S SQUARE was the heart of Potok. On one side stood the cathedral, not very grand, crumbly and homely, built of grey-gold stone with three red-tiled domes. Opposite it stood the Palace Hotel, which at first glance looked far more imposing, but at second glance had something fake about it. Steff had insisted on a quick tour of Potok their first evening, before the concert, so that they could find their way round without getting lost, and being Steff he’d already looked everything up in an ancient guidebook. The Palace Hotel, he said, looked like a fake because it was one.
When the War of Independence was over and the Turks agreed to let Varina become semi-independent, provided Restaur Vax went into exile, Bishop Pango had become the first Prince-Bishop. The old Bishop’s Palace had been part of St Valia, which the Turks had destroyed, and there wasn’t enough money to build a new one, so he’d taken over five of the merchants’ houses opposite the cathedral and got an architect to design a grand façade, with a great porch and curling double stairways. The façade was symmetrical, but the houses behind weren’t, so some of the windows were blank, and several of them were half-blank, with bits of the old windows showing behind the new ones. Letta didn’t like anything to do with Bishop Pango, so she thought his palace was just right for the old fraud.