next confrontation, there will be numerous preparations. So well be trapped here for several weeks. Either we pass our time playing cards on this stupid island, or we are regularly invited to Vienna!’ Vienna, Vienna, Vienna! Margont could not stop thinking about that legendary city. Lefine shook his head. ‘You’re not giving me the full story, Captain. I know you. We’re going to get involved in an escapade that doesn’t directly concern us just because of your humanist ideals!’

Having said that, though, Lefine thought his friend might be right. The ruins of Aspern and Essling were still smoking, but already Napoleon had whipped his army into a frenzy of activity. They had started to build a bridge on stilts to provide a better link between Lobau and the west bank; they were setting up batteries everywhere, even on the tiny neighbouring islands; they were clearing the roads to make them passable; they were digging and nailing together bastions, depots for provisions and munitions, a forge, hospitals, barracks ... The French army and its German allies were settling in. So obviously, if there was a way of going off to Vienna to have some fun, rather than labouring in the sun on this ant hill

Margont, impatient as always, led Lefine rapidly into the midst of thousands of soldiers. Many were still asleep, exhausted by two days of combat. They were stretched out in the shade of the trees, their white breeches and dark blue coats almost entirely obscured by the high pale green grasses. The blows of felling axes cracked like feeble gunshot and the noise of saws filled the air like the buzzing of a swarm of bees building a new hive.

The 8th Regiment of Hussars were resting in the cool thickets, after their sustained attack on the Austrians. Margont spied three hussars passing a long-stemmed pipe amongst them.

‘Could you tell me where I can find Lieutenant Relmyer?’

A quartermaster of cavalry caught hold of one of his plaits, twisting it round his finger. His green dolman was spattered with dried blood. ‘What do you want to see our Lieutenant Relmyer for, Captain? If it’s to tell him something, we can pass it on.’

‘I must see him personally.’

‘We’ll make sure we tell him that.’

‘Are you going to tell me where I can find Lieutenant Relmyer or not?’ fumed Margont.

The quartermaster of cavalry puffed out his chest in the manner of a cock dealing with some lesser fowl come to squawk in his poultry yard. This infantry bird was lucky he had an officer’s epaulette, otherwise he would have received a sharp peck.

‘Captain, once when Lieutenant Relmyer was quartermaster, his lieutenant shouted at him for wearing non-regulation uniform. The exchange became heated. Relmyer insulted the lieutenant, who challenged him to a duel, or perhaps it was the other way round, and bam! The lieutenant was floored, and his shoulder run through. Now the poor bugger has a dead arm dangling and he serves in the equipment corps. He counts the wagons ...’

The NCO spoke the last words sadly. For him it was a thousand times better to be a hussar - even a dead one — than a bureaucrat in the commissariat.

Margont looked surprised. ‘Relmyer injured an officer? Surely he was arrested at least?’

‘Captain Lidoine wanted to have him shot, but Major Batichut promoted him to lieutenant in place of the lieutenant Relmyer had floored. Now do you understand why we’re not in a hurry to send you to see him? You never know, he might want to become a captain ...’

Lefine recoiled instinctively. Better to stay well away from duellists. Duellists handed out death like others might hand out accolades. The quartermaster shrugged and indicated the nearby willows. ‘Don’t say we didn’t warn you ... You can’t miss him, he’s practising with his sabre over there.’

Margont went off towards the thicket. Lefine hung back, gazing at the quartermaster’s dolman. He was having a sort of vision. He saw the coagulated blood growing wet, liquefying. The stains glistened in the sun before beginning to run down, tracing wide vertical stripes on the jacket. The quartermaster took a puff of the pipe before frowning as he surveyed Lefine.

‘Well, what are you waiting for? Mid-Lent? You won’t get any

tobacco, however long you hang about!’

Lefine moved off, telling himself that it must be the sun, the heat ... The vision terrified him. This affair smelt of death. Wasn’t there enough of that already with the war?

It was indeed impossible not to notice Relmyer. In shirtsleeves and covered in sweat, he vigorously fought invisible assailants. He lunged, jabbed, parried, sidestepped in order better to attack, feinted ... against a seemingly inexhaustible number of enemies. Or perhaps just one enemy that he was unable to vanquish. Mar-gont was not a great swordsman - he had more or less mastered a few moves. Nevertheless he could tell that Relmyer was extremely gifted.

‘It looks as if Relmyer has a few accounts to settle,’ he murmured to Lefine.

‘In that case, I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of whoever he wants to settle them with.’

‘His adversary must be pretty dreadful to drive him to such rage.’ Relmyer turned in their direction, saluted them with his sabre and

joined them, mopping his brow. His physique was impressive. What age was he? Twenty? His manner, assured without being arrogant, was that of an experienced man. On the other hand, his rosebud mouth, naive expression and slightly infantile features were those of an adolescent. He therefore appeared both older and younger than he actually was.

‘May I ask the reason for your visit, Captain?’ His Austrian accent betrayed his origins.

‘Lieutenant Relmyer? I’m Captain Margont and this is my friend Sergeant Lefine. We have come to inform you that Mademoiselle Luise Mitterburg wishes to see you.’

Relmyer immediately barricaded himself inside his inner fortress, locking up his feelings so that they would not show. ‘Yes, certainly, but later.’

‘Mademoiselle Mitterburg and I met by chance. I helped her search for a certain Wilhelm ...’

The name hit Relmyer like a blow impossible to parry. His face hardened, ageing him brutally, as if his age were more a matter of

his emotions than his years. Suddenly the trilling of the birds seemed to irritate him and Margont thought that he was going to draw his sabre and slice through the poor robin sitting carolling on too low a branch.

‘He’s dead, I know. And disfigured! The two hussars I dispatched to find him described the state he was found in. I wanted to see to it myself but my captain forbade it. He finds me unruly. Unruly! I’m a cavalryman, not a horse!’

He tidied his brown curls and then managed to smile. ‘You’re a captain yourself: perhaps if you were to talk to him, he would let me go and investigate this business ...’

Margont was infuriated. Like Luise Mitterburg, Relmyer had no compunction in soliciting his help. ‘I know nothing about this affair, why would I go—’

Relmyer placed his hands on Margont’s shoulders. ‘Come, Monsieur! I can see you’re a man of compassion! Won’t you help an honest officer in distress?’

His tone might have sounded theatrical had there not been tears

in his eyes. At that moment he could have been taken for a thirteen-year-old boy.

‘Well, perhaps, it depends on ...’ stammered Margont, embarrassed.

Lefine suppressed the desire to hit his friend. If you always looked after other people, you ended up failing to look after yourself - a dangerous defect that he was at no risk of succumbing to. ‘Mademoiselle Mitterburg is my sister, or as good as, and she’s rich,’ added Relmyer. ‘She can lend you money, or give it to you ... She’ll do it without hesitating if I ask her to.’

Now Lefine was interested. If they were to be paid for doing a favour, that put everything in a different light.

‘She’ll get you invited to receptions,’ continued Relmyer.