Victus Read online

“Perfect, then,” he said, pleased. “We’ll make a start. Go next door, if you would, and bring me La nouvelle fortification by Nicolaus Goldmann. And De Secretis Secretorum by Walter de Milemete.”

  The library continued in an adjoining room. I could not believe that anyone could be so eccentric as to store such quantities of printed paper. I entered through a doorless recess—and there was Armand once more! At the top of a stairwell, organizing books, with his splendid bald pate and white goatee. The same black breeches, the same white shirt. He looked over at me. Those same gray wolf eyes, and that same kind but shrewd smile. “Can I help you with anything, young man?”

  “You . . . you yourself know very well,” I said, dumbfounded. “I’m looking for La nouvelle fortification by Nicolaus Goldmann and De Secretis Secretorum by Walter de Milemete.”

  Descending the stairs, he handed me the books.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “Using the index. This library is governed by a principle known as ‘order.’ ”

  I was utterly baffled. I retraced my steps, coming back through into the larger room, the books under my arm. And I found Armand sitting at his desk!

  The mystery was solved only when my librarian came in and joined us. They were identical twins, as difficult to tell apart as crabs. Even the wrinkles on their cheeks were the same. They began to laugh. Later on I found that confusing the servants at Bazoches was a pastime they greatly enjoyed. They found the range of jokes permitted by that particular corporeal fusion endlessly amusing.

  “But you’re so alike!” I exclaimed, a little disturbed.

  “I can assure you that it won’t be long before you can tell us apart.”

  At that moment the only difference I could see was that one was called Armand and the other Zeno—or vice versa, so impossible did I find it to distinguish them. The first made me sit at a table. He placed Goldmann and Milemete in front of me and, now deeply serious, gave me an order: “Read. And if you understand any of it, let me know.”

  A strange directive. They left me to read uninterrupted for a while. I did so with the best will. Milemete was my chosen starting point; the title seemed promising. Secrets upon secrets—I was hoping for dragons, founts of eternal life, carnivorous ox-eating plants, that sort of thing. Not in the slightest; it was dry as could be. The only thing that appealed were the prints of some kind of Roman amphora that had four legs and vomited fire. As for Goldmann, again, the pictures were the most interesting thing. They looked to my eye like the illegible scrawls of a person so hopelessly bored that he had resorted to filling page after page with maniacal geometric shapes. After a little while, the twins said: “Et alors?”

  I looked up. Better to be honest.”Not a word,” I admitted.

  “Perfect. Herein lies today’s lesson,” said Armand. “Now, at least, you know that you know nothing at all.”

  The next day the Ducroix brothers continued to indulge me. They limited themselves to assessing my knowledge so they could establish where to begin. I was not very focused—my thoughts were all of Jeanne.

  “Something bothering you?” asked Zeno.

  “Absolutely not,” I said, waking from my daydream. “Merely, I have so recently arrived and do not yet know my position in Bazoches.”

  “But how can that be?” said Armand. “Are you yet to be introduced to the inhabitants of the castle?”

  He himself brought me before each of the servants. I must say, both Zeno and Armand were courtesy personified. With them, there was nothing of the usual distance affected by nobles toward common folk. The latter knew perfectly well their station, of course, but the twins comported themselves with a cordialness that occluded any difference.

  To their right, they had me, and to their left, Vauban. They had been with him for decades; they knew all his engineering secrets and shared in his philosophy. They helped in the early stages of his fortification projects, and helped bridge Vauban’s military and worldly affairs. Truly, I was lucky to arrive at Bazoches in the autumn of great de Vauban’s life. At any other time, the Ducroix twins would have been too busy to lavish such attention on me.

  “Now for the marquis’s daughter.”

  Hearing these words, I had to adjust my breeches so no one would notice my upstanding member. I was, however, disappointed, as I was henceforth brought before an altogether different creature: Charlotte, Jeanne’s sister and Vauban’s eldest. She had a little peach face, red cheeks, a mouth shorter than a tortoise’s tail, and a nose oddly positioned, a set square that commenced somewhere above her eyebrows. She had a laugh like a parrot, clo, clo, clo, and jowls that shook like the bag of a bagpipe.

  And if you, gentle reader, think me a clown for describing her in such terms, how wrong you are. The fact is, I found it distressing to make her acquaintance: How could nature be that cruel? Sisters they were, but all virtue had fallen to Jeanne. Intelligence, great beauty, wit, while Charlotte had always been a simple soul, not a bad bone in her body.

  “I believe you have met Jeanne already,” said Armand. “She is in town at the moment, occupied by some charitable affair.”

  Wonderful.

  “Her husband is hardly ever in Bazoches himself,” remarked Zeno. “When you make his acquaintance, please behave kindly and . . . with a certain delicacy. He is an unusual character.”

  “What Zeno means to say,” clarified Armand, “is that his mind is not all there.”

  At the end of the day, I retired to my lovely lavender-smelling quarters. What, I, to bed? Not on your life.

  During the Ducroix brothers’ tour of the castle’s living quarters, I had learned which was Jeanne’s room. I waited for everyone to be abed before approaching. In any case, I would not have been able to sleep. I let a little time pass before leaving my room, barefoot and carrying an oil lamp. I came to Jeanne’s door and knocked softly. Nothing happened. I was vacillating—knock again or withdraw—when finally she came to the door.

  Perhaps it is owing to my tender years, but I had never suffered an impression such as that. And I say “suffered,” for love, I say, is quite capable of provoking physical pain. My lungs shrank; my mind, usually agile, became suddenly muddy. The lamp flames were less atremble than I.

  My first sight of her had been in the attire of a common country girl; next, she had been made up like a queen; now, in a nightgown and with her red locks tumbling loose. And we were alone in the dark. The faint light from the two flames, mine and hers, revealed the outlines of what was beneath her gown. I had been rehearsing two or three phrases but merely stood, slack-jawed.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I wanted to . . . to thank you,” I said, eventually reacting. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

  “Do you deem it appropriate to be calling at a woman’s door at this hour?”

  “Why did you choose me? Of the three, I was least well prepared—it was plain to see.”

  “I like to wear comfortable clothing when we are not receiving visitors. Those two walked straight past me, didn’t even notice a servant; they saw nothing.” Something in her aspect altered. “You asked for help.” Regretting having spoken with such frankness, she sought to change the subject. She glanced up and down the passageway to see if anyone was coming. “How old are you?”

  I was a few months short of fifteen. “Eighteen.”

  “So young?” she said, surprised.

  As a youth, I always looked five years older than my true age, and when I became a man, twenty less. My theory being that le Mystère was in a hurry to make me grow, because it had designs on me to die before my time, in 1714. This was followed by certain unforeseen cosmic occurrences; a number of decades passed with le Mystère neglecting to add years to me, and here you have me, gentle reader, here you have me.

  “I care not a jot for engineering,” I said. “Since the moment I laid eyes on you, I have thought of nothing else.”

  She laughed—she hadn’t expected this. “If you knew what was in sto
re for you, you’d change your priorities.”

  I did not take her meaning.

  “The previous cadet lasted three weeks,” she explained. “That was not so bad; the previous one went home after day five.”

  “When I came to Bazoches, I did not know what I was looking for,” I said. “Now I do.”

  She wasn’t having any of it. My feelings were sincere, but my ways of presenting them straight out of a cheap theater.

  “To bed with you,” she said. “Believe me, come tomorrow you’ll be happy of some rest.”

  And she shut the door in my face.

  4

  Jeanne couldn’t have been more right, as I very soon found.

  We began with Drawing, the Ducroix view being that ink and line awoke the senses. Next came Physics and Geometry. That was when I learned what a privilege it is to have a tutor dedicated entirely to you. And I had two! I’m no pedagogue; I would not know how to go about evaluating their methods, so all I can say is that they applied to me a unique combination of indulgence, discipline, and acuity of spirit.

  Next, a break and the lemon juice. “Drink.”

  It was an order. Until I grew accustomed to it, they had to watch that I did not empty the glass into some nearby plant pot. Because “lemon juice” wasn’t truly accurate; Vauban, altogether the polymath, had invented a brew composed of root extracts, beeswax, various juices, and goodness knows what else, so congealed and sickly sweet that it was hard to stomach. In his view, it awakened the brain and fortified the muscles. Well, it didn’t quite kill me.

  Possibly the most curious discipline at Bazoches was the one they called the Spherical Room. The name was closer to the reality than that of the juice, because it really was a room without any corners, egg-shaped, a gigantic globe with matte, pure whitewashed walls. Even the floor was concave, so when the door shut behind you, you were confined in this immaculate sphere. The Spherical Room was at the top of the castle. There was a skylight in the center of the roof, which let sunlight in to flood the space.

  “You have five minutes exactly,” said the Ducroix twins the first time they pushed me inside.

  I felt taken aback the first time. And not because I expected something malign; I simply did not know what to expect. Ever since I’d come to Bazoches, I’d had the sense of a world of marvels surrounding me: strange books, wise twins, beautiful women. And now this spherical, light-filled room, and me inside it, alone, bemused by the majestic silence.

  There were objects up ahead. Dozens and dozens of white threads hanging from the ceiling, invisible at the point where they merged with the far walls. And from the threads, hanging at different heights, the most diverse array of objects: a horseshoe, a theater mask, a simple nail. A wig! A goose feather hard to see against the white walls. A gold clock revolving at the end of the small chain.

  Five minutes later, they opened the door.

  “Speak,” said Armand. “What did you see?”

  “Things hanging,” was my flustered response.

  Zeno was behind me. He dealt me a slap to the neck. I turned defiantly and exclaimed: “You hit me!”

  “The objective is not the blow itself but to wake you up,” Zeno said by way of justification.

  “Cadet Zuviría!” called out Armand. “You are blind. Any engineer who does not know how to use his eyes properly is no engineer. If you had been paying attention, you would have given a worthier answer than this vague ‘things hanging.’ Useless. What things? How many? In what order, height, and depth?”

  They made me enter once more—more accurately, they flung me back in. I committed what I could upon my retinas and to memory. When I came out, I had to describe the objects in detail and according to position. I began with the things that had been at the front and detailed the following ones using these as reference. They listened attentively and did not interrupt at any point.

  “Pathetic,” was Armand’s view. “There were twenty-two objects, and you have described only fifteen, and those poorly. There was a horseshoe, yes. But how many holes did it have? Which side was it hanging on? How high up?”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

  “Do you not understand?” said Zeno, cutting me off. “When you are attacking a bastion or defending one, and you have only a few seconds to form a picture of the situation, how are you going to take responsibility for the lives of those under you?”

  “Paying attention is essential,” said Armand. “Always, at all hours and in all places. Otherwise you’ll fail to see things, and if that happens, you’ll be no use in this role. From now on, you’ll remain constantly attentive, both awake and asleep. Clear?”

  “I think so.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure you’ve understood?”

  “Yes,” I cried, more out of frustration than belief.

  Before I’d finished saying “yes,” Zeno instantly said: “Describe the buckles on my shoes.”

  Instinctively, I looked down.

  Zeno lifted my chin with a finger. “Answer.”

  I could not.

  “Since you have been with us, I have been wearing the same footwear. And in all that time, you have failed to notice they have no buckles.”

  In Bazoches, I realized how blind people are. Most men, when they look around, do so in a hurry, alighting briefly on single objects, guided by the base instincts—this I like, this I do not—like children. The Ducroix brothers divided the human race into two: moles and Maganons. Ninety-nine out of a hundred were blind as moles. A good Maganon would notice more things in one day than a mole would in a year. (You yourself, you blubbery mole, how many fingers do I have? Do you see? All this time together, and you have failed to notice that the tip of one of my pinkie fingers is missing. Shrapnel, Gibraltar. I say, it served well: The siege scuppered them, and I enjoyed making life difficult for a Bourbon.)

  That day they put up twenty-two objects; others, thirty, forty, even fifty. Sometimes just one, which was mere mockery, for I then had to recount its every detail. My personal best was describing one hundred and ninety-eight objects hanging from a panoply of white threads. And I had to remember everything about each and every object: the number of holes in the flute, pearls on the necklace, and teeth on the saw. Have you, gentle reader, ever tried such a thing? Do so, do, and you’ll discover in small details the vast complexity of our world.

  These would all have been no more than quaint and stimulating drills, part and parcel with the brothers’ eccentricity, had it not been for the discipline known as “Fieldwork.” I imagined this was going to be some form of bracing exercise in the open air. Wasn’t it just!

  We went to a field a mile or so away from the castle, a rectangular field that looked as though it hadn’t been tilled in many years. The Ducroix brothers began to hold forth on the lovely views. This was very much the way they went about things; their academic activities never drew them away from their principal motivation in life: to take pleasure in the sight of a bird in flight or a beautiful sunset.

  “Well, Cadet Zuviría,” said Armand, finally turning to face me. “Let us suppose—and a wild supposition it remains—that you have become a member of the engineering corps. And let us then suppose that a ditch needs making. What would you do?”

  “I suppose order the sappers to begin digging,” I answered, caught somewhat off balance.

  “Very good!” said Zeno, applauding sarcastically.

  Four servants from the castle approached. They were carrying stakes, ropes, and small bags containing lime, and these they deposited at our feet. Also some voluminous round wicker baskets, which, I would later learn, were known as fajinas. As well as these, an iron helmet that looked two hundred years old, a leather cuirass of a sort, and a rifle. They also left a pile of sticks, clubs, and a thousand digging implements. There are more kinds of shovels in the world than butterflies, was one of the things I learned that day.

  “What are you waiting for?” said Armand.


  “What’s the rifle for?” I asked, a little worried.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about the rifle,” said Zeno, picking it up, walking a little way away, and loading it.

  The first lessons I’d received had been on the metrics of fortifications. I took a stake and inserted it deep into the earth. I then took a rope, tied one end to the base of the stake, unspooled it to a length of sixty or seventy feet, tying the other end to another stake. I then sprinkled lime over the rope; the powder that fell either side marked a straight line for the excavation. Then I heard the report: A bullet had just flown by, whizzing past my helmet like a bumblebee.

  I let out a shrill cry. “Eeeh!” I could not believe it; Zeno had shot at me! He stood a hundred feet away, reloading the rifle.

  “The other way around,” said Armand. “First you smear the lime onto the rope. Then unroll it. If the rope is covered in a good amount of lime, laying it out will leave a clear line. That way you save having to move around the field a second time, and give your enemy less time to shoot at you.

  “Zeno can reload and fire every two minutes,” he continued. “Lucky for you. A young rifleman, if he’s at all handy, will be able to do it in less than half that time. If I were you, I’d hurry up and start digging.”

  I grabbed a pick by the handle—it weighed more than a dead man—and attacked the strip of lime for all I was worth.

  “If you please!” said Armand. “Adjust your chin strap and the cuirass.”

  “But why was your brother shooting at me?” I cried.

  “Because it was his turn. Now it’s mine.” And he went to take the loaded rifle from Zeno.

  The helmet they had given me was more like something from the fifteenth century than our own, with a visor and long earflaps, also made of iron, all extremely heavy. I was still struggling to adjust the cuirass when I heard another report. I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Promise you’ll only shoot with caps!”

  They both laughed.

  “Truce!” I said, raising my hands in the air. “I stop digging, you stop firing, and you can give me some coaching in that Mystère you keep mentioning.”