The Siege Read online

  “The result of errors in the mixture used for the fuses,” General Lesueur slyly interjects.

  “That hardly matters since none of the missiles actually reached the city. The distances attained decreased each time the howitzers were fired. And the bush pins did not help.”

  “In what sense?” inquires Marshal Victor.

  “Every time the cannon was fired the vent was weakened thereby decreasing the thrust.”

  The silence this time is longer. The marshal studies the map for a moment. General Ruffin has turned back toward the window. From outside comes the clang of the sappers’ picks and shovels. After a while, the marshal turns away from the map.

  “Let me put it another way, Captain … I’m sorry, could you remind me of your name?”

  “Simon Desfosseux, Excellency.”

  “Listen, Captain Desfosseux … I have three hundred large-caliber field guns trained on Cádiz and a foundry in Seville working around the clock. I have my senior artillery staff, and I have you who, according to poor Senarmont, may he rest in peace, are a brilliant theorist. I have given you the technical means and the authority … What more do you need to bomb the bloody manolos?”

  “Mortars, Excellency.”

  A fly lands on the Duc de Belluno’s nose.

  “Mortars, you say?”

  “Yes. Mortars of greater caliber than the Dedon model: fourteen inches.”

  Victor shoos the fly, with a gesture that, for an instant, reveals the boorish, uncouth soldier beneath the medals and ribbons pinned to his uniform.

  “Forget the damned mortars, do you hear me?”

  “Perfectly, Your Excellency.”

  “If the Emperor says we must use howitzers, then we will use howitzers and keep our opinions to ourselves.”

  Captain Desfosseux raises a hand in supplication. Just one more minute. Because if this is the case, there is something he needs to ask the marshal. Does His Excellency want the bombs to explode, or is it enough for them to drop in Cádiz? Then he falls silent and waits. After a moment’s hesitation in which he exchanges glances with his generals, Marshal Victor retorts that he does not understand the captain’s question. Desfosseux once again gestures toward the map and explains that he needs to know whether he is required to inflict serious damage on the city or whether it is enough to simply drop bombs, thereby sapping the morale of the inhabitants. Whether the shells are required to explode or whether minor damage is sufficient.

  The marshal’s consternation is clear. He scratches the spot on his nose where the fly landed.

  “What do you mean by minor damage?”

  “The damage caused by eighty pounds of inert bomb, which would certainly smash objects and make some noise.”

  “Listen to me, Captain.” Victor no longer seems angry. “What I really want is for the city to be bombed to rubble and then have my grenadiers march in with fixed bayonets and occupy it … However, since this has proved impossible, what I want is an article in Le Moniteur back in Paris stating—truthfully—that we are pulverizing the city of Cádiz. From one end to the other.”

  It is Desfosseux’s turn to smile. For the first time. Not an insolent smirk, nor anything unbecoming to his rank and station. Merely a faint smile, a hint of things to come.

  “I have run tests using a ten-inch howitzer firing special shells. In fact they are very simple: they contain no powder. No fuse, no charge. Some are solid iron, others are filled with lead and sand. They may prove interesting as regards the range if I can resolve a secondary problem.”

  “And what damage do they inflict?”

  “They break things. With any luck, they might damage a building, kill or injure someone. They make a lot of noise. And they may extend our range by a hundred or even two hundred toises.”

  “Tactical efficacy?”

  “Negligible.”

  Victor exchanges a look with General Lesueur, who nods vigorously as though to confirm this, although Desfosseux knows Lesueur is utterly ignorant in the matter. The results of the latest tests with Fanfan are known only to him and to Lieutenant Bertoldi.

  “Very well. At least it is something. It will be enough to satisfy Le Moniteur for the time being. But do not give up on the standard weapons. I want you to carry on using conventional shells with fuses and so forth. It’s always worthwhile lighting a candle to Christ and another to the devil.”

  The Duc de Belluno gets to his feet and everyone automatically stands. Hearing the chair scrape across the floor, General Ruffin turns back from the window.

  “One more thing, Captain. Should you manage to get a bomb to hit the church of San Felipe Neri—I don’t care whether or not the shell explodes—where those outlaws who call themselves the Cortes meet, I will promote you to Commandant. Do you understand? You have my word on it …”

  General Lesueur makes a face and Marshal Victor glares at him.

  “What?” he snaps. “Do you have a problem with my decision?”

  “It’s not that, sir,” Lesueur apologizes. “Captain Desfosseux has twice refused a promotion such as the one your Excellency is suggesting.”

  As he says this, Lesueur glares at Desfosseux with a palpable mixture of jealousy and animosity. To a professional soldier, any man who refuses a promotion is suspect—to do so is a blatant repudiation of the career path common among veterans in the Imperial Army, those who rise through the ranks, winning honors, being promoted from ordinary foot soldier until, like the Duc de Belluno or indeed General Lesueur himself, they are in a position to pillage the lands, villages and towns under their command and send the spoils back to their mansions in France. Three decades of glory in the service of the Republic, the Consul and the Empire, of stoically facing death, are not inimical to dying a rich man, preferably in one’s own bed. All the more reason to mistrust a man like Desfosseux, who insists on marching to the beat of his own drum. Were it not for his undisputed technical abilities, General Lesueur would long since have had the man posted to some remote stronghold, or left him to rot in the squalid trenches dotted around the Isla de León.

  “Well, well,” says Victor, “I see we are dealing with an individualist. Perhaps he looks down his nose at those of us who accept promotion.”

  There is an awkward silence which is finally broken by a roar of laughter from the marshal himself.

  “Very well, Captain. Keep up the good work and remember what I said about bombing San Felipe. My offer of a promotion still stands … Unless there is something you would rather have?”

  “A fourteen-inch mortar, Excellency.”

  “Get out of here,” the hero of the battle of Marengo splutters, jerking his head toward the door. “Get out of my sight, you pig-headed bastard!”

  THE TAXIDERMIST ARRIVES early at Frasquito Sanlúcar’s soap emporium on the Calle Bendición de Dios next to the Plaza Mentidero. It is a cool, narrow, dimly lit shop with a window overlooking an interior courtyard; at the back of the shop stands a display case in front of a curtain leading to the stockroom. Piles of boxes and glass-topped drawers displaying goods. Small bottles intended for expensive products. Colors and scents, the smell of soap and incense. On the wall, a tinted engraving of King Fernando VII and an antique mercury-column ship’s barometer.

  “Good morning, Frasquito.”

  The soap merchant, a redhead dressed in gray overalls, looks more English than Spanish despite his surname. He wears spectacles and his face is covered with freckles that disappear into his curly thinning hair.

  “Good morning, Don Gregorio, what can I do for you today?”

  Gregorio Fumagal—for this is the taxidermist’s name—smiles. He is a regular customer here, because Frasquito Sanlúcar’s emporium offers the finest range of products in Cádiz, from pomades and translucent, high-quality toilet soaps imported from abroad to the commonplace Spanish soaps used for laundry.

  “I’d like some hair dye. And two pounds of the white soap I bought last time.”

  “What did you think of it?”


  “First-rate. You were right, it is perfect for cleaning animal pelts.”

  “I told you so. Much better than the soap you used to buy. And less expensive.”

  Two young women come into the shop. “I’m in no hurry,” says the taxidermist, stepping away from the display counter while Sanlúcar serves them. They live in the neighborhood and are clearly lower class: they wear thick woolen shawls over serge skirts, their hair is pinned up with clips, and shopping baskets are slung over their arms. They are offhand, in the way only women of Cádiz can be. One of the girls is slim and pretty, with a fine complexion and slender hands. Gregorio Fumagal watches as they rummage through boxes and sacks of merchandise.

  “Give me half a pound of this yellow soap, Frasquito.”

  “Absolutely not. I could not possibly recommend it for you. Too much tallow, niña.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It means it contains a lot of fat. Pork fat, mostly. It leaves a faint smell on washing … I’ll give you some of this one here, it’s made of sesame oil. Luxuriously indulgent.”

  “More expensive too, I’ve no doubt. I know you.”

  Frasquito Sanlúcar adopts an innocent expression. “A fraction more expensive, perhaps. But you deserve a soap worthy of a Moorish queen. Exceptional quality. Opulent. For a beauty such as yourself. This very soap is used by the Empress Josephine herself.”

  “Really? But I don’t want to smell like some gabacho whore.”

  “Just a moment, niña, I hadn’t finished. It was also used by the Queen of England. And the Infanta Carlotta of Portugal. And the Countess—”

  “A pretty fairy tale, Frasquito, but I don’t believe you.”

  The soap merchant picks up a box which he is about to wrap in colored paper. With his female customers, he always packs his wares in fancy boxes with expensive paper and labels so they serve as an advertisement for the shop.

  “How many pounds did you say you wanted, my dove?”

  As he bids the young women goodbye, Gregorio Fumagal steps aside to let them pass, studying them as they leave.

  “My apologies, Don Gregorio.” The soap merchant turns to him. “Thank you for your patience.”

  “I see you still have a wide range of stock in spite of the war.”

  “I can’t complain. As long as the port remains free, we have everything we need. I even manage to get goods from France, which is just as well, since Cádiz is accustomed to imported goods, and Spanish soap is not very highly regarded … it’s said to be grossly adulterated.”

  “And do you adulterate your soap?”

  Sanlúcar now adopts his most haughty expression. “With soaps, there is a difference between adulteration and blending. Look here,” he says indicating a box of soap cakes that are immaculately white. “German soap. Like our own it contains a lot of animal fat, because they have no oils there, but they purify it until it is odorless. No one would want a Spanish toilet soap. The merchandise is poor quality, people simply do not trust it. In the end the innocent”—he pauses, modifying his thought—“in the end we the innocent always suffer because of the guilty.”

  There is a muffled rumble in the distance. Barely enough to shake the wooden floor and the glass in the window frames. Both men listen intently for a moment.

  “Do people around here worry much about the bombs?”

  “Not much.” Sanlúcar casually carries on wrapping the two pounds of soap and the bottle of hair dye in brown paper. “We’re too far away. The bombs don’t even reach San Agustín.”

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “Seven reales.”

  The taxidermist puts a silver duro on the counter and, half-turned toward the direction of the explosion, waits for his change.

  “At any event, they are gradually coming closer.”

  “But not too close, thank the Lord. One landed in the Calle del Rosario this morning. That is as close as they’ve come, and that’s a thousand yards from here. That’s why so many people come here at night; people have started coming to this part of the city to sleep.”

  “In the open air?… That must be a queer sight.”

  “Indeed it is. Every night there are more of them, the plaza is a sea of mattresses, blankets, nightcaps; they sleep in the doorways or anywhere they can find … The authorities say they plan to move them on, to build shelters on the waste ground next to Santa Catalina. Behind the barracks.”

  When Gregorio Fumagal steps out of the soap merchant’s emporium, package tucked under his arm, the two girls are up ahead, gazing in shop windows. The taxidermist casts a glance at them, then walks away from the Plaza Mentidero toward the eastern sector of the city through the orderly grid of streets that were designed to temper winds from both east and west. Along the way, he stops at a little shop on the Calle del Tinte where he buys three grains of mercuric chloride, six ounces of camphor and eight of white arsenic. Then he walks on as far as the corner of Amoladores and Rosario where various parishioners are sitting in the doorway of a tavern uncorking a bottle as they stare at the building hit by a bomb at nine o’clock that morning. A section of the facade has been destroyed, ripped open to reveal three floors and a vertical trail of destruction: broken joists, doors open onto the void, prints and paintings askew on the walls, a bed and other furniture perched miraculously over the ruins. Domestic intimacy laid bare in a manner that is almost obscene. Neighbors, soldiers and members of the nightwatch are shoring up the walls and picking through the debris.

  “Was anyone hurt?” Fumagal asks the innkeeper.

  “Nothing serious, thank God. There was no one in the section of the building that collapsed … The landlady and a maid were the only people injured … The blast did a lot of damage, but it could have been much worse.”

  The taxidermist walks over to the spot where a group of bystanders are staring at the remains of the shell case: fragments of iron and lead amid the rubble, twisted shards like corkscrews half a palm’s length. Fumagal overhears someone say that the house once belonged to a French merchant who has been incarcerated for the past three years in one of the prison ships anchored in the bay. The new owners converted it into a boardinghouse. The landlady, having been rescued from the rubble, is in the hospital with two broken legs. The chambermaid sustained only minor bruising.

  “It was a narrow escape,” comments one woman, making the sign of the cross.

  The taxidermist’s keen eye takes in everything. The direction from which the bomb came, the angle of incidence, the damage caused. The wind is coming from the east today. A light breeze. Doing his best not to attract attention, he walks from the spot where the missile fell to the church—the Iglesia del Rosario—counting his paces, calculating the distance: about twenty-five toises. Discreetly, he takes out a lead pencil and jots the figure on a notepad he takes from his coat pocket; from here he will transfer it to the map spread out on the desk in his workshop. Lines and curves. Points of impact on a grid like a spider’s web slowly spreading across the city. As he writes, he sees the girls from the soap merchant’s who have come to witness the damage caused by the bomb. So intent is he on watching them that the taxidermist bumps into a man of bronzed complexion coming in the other direction, wearing a black tricorne and a blue frockcoat with gilt buttons. After a curt apology from Fumagal, the men go their separate ways.

  PÉPÉ LOBO PAYS no heed to the man in dark clothes shuffling away with two packages clutched in his slim, pale hands. The sailor has other things to think about. Chief among them the realization that misfortune is dogging his every step. His trunk and all his belongings are buried beneath the rubble of the boardinghouse where he lives—or lived in until today. Not that he possesses much, three shirts and some white linen, a jacket, breeches, underwear, a frockcoat, an English spyglass and sextant, a longitude watch, nautical charts, two pistols and a number of crucial items, among them his captain’s license. No money; what little money he has he carries with him. Barely enough to jingle in his pocket. As fo
r the money he is owed for his most recent voyage—he doesn’t know when he will be paid. His last visit to the owner of the Risueña half an hour ago was hardly promising.

  “Come back in a couple of days, Captain. When we’ve taken an inventory of this disastrous voyage and everything is sorted. Our first priority must be to compensate the creditors for the delay in the ship’s arrival. Your delay, Captain. I hope you are prepared to accept responsibility. Excuse me? Oh, yes. I’m sorry we have no other command positions available. We will of course be in touch should one arise. Never fear. And now, if you’ll forgive me …”

  Crossing the street, the sailor comes upon a group of people gathered outside the house. Angry comments, insults directed at the French. Nothing new. He pushes his way through the crowd of bystanders until a sergeant in the Volunteer Force hails him and tells him in no uncertain terms that he can go no further.

  “I live in this house. My name is Captain Lobo.”

  The sergeant looks him up and down.

  “Captain?”

  “Indeed.”

  Titles do not seem to impress the man in the blue and white uniform worn by officers of the urban forces, but being a native of Cádiz, as soon as he realizes that Lobo works for the merchant navy, he tempers his attitude. When the captain tells him about the trunk, the sergeant offers to have a soldier help him search the ruins. Lobo thanks him, removes his frockcoat, rolls up his shirtsleeves and sets about the task. Finding somewhere else to live will be no easy task, he thinks worriedly as he shifts stones, bricks and broken planks. The recent influx of foreigners has led to a scarcity in lodgings. The number of inhabitants in Cádiz has doubled: the inns and boardinghouses are full, even rooms and terraces in private houses are being let or sublet at exorbitant rates. It is impossible to find anything for less than 25 reales a day, and the annual rent for a modest living space now runs to 10,000 reales—a sum few people can afford to pay. Some of the refugees belong to the landed gentry, who receive monies from America, rents from properties in the occupied territories or from businesses in Paris and London; but for the most part they are bankrupt landowners, patriots who refuse to swear allegiance to the royal interloper, unemployed civil servants from the previous administration washed up in Cádiz by the ebb and flow of war. A tide of refugees trailing families who have followed the fleeing Spanish Regency since the French first marched into Madrid and Seville. Countless immigrants have thronged into the city without the means to live with dignity, their number swelled by those who daily flee those parts of Spain already under French occupation and those in danger of being so. There is thankfully no shortage of food, and people muddle by as best they can.