Aries

LVII

Johann and Wolff were wading their way through the dense scrub, which had been bogging them down for days and showed no sign of thinning out. The soft, moss-covered ground beneath their feet was not making things any easier either. It was dusk and the trees were turning black in the receding rays of the sun.

They were unbearably hot in their pilgrim habits, trudging along on foot now since the terrain had been impassable on horseback.

The habits had enabled them to reach Savoy undetected but the sooner they could rid themselves of them the better, as far as Johann was concerned. He felt nothing but admiration for the pious men who bore the discomfort of those coarse, thick garments so patiently.

Johann stopped, pulled out his waterskin and took a few gulps. Then he handed it to Wolff who guzzled down what was left.

'It can't be far now,' said Wolff, out of breath.

'I've heard that before, in fact I've been hearing it since-' Johann broke off suddenly and raised his hand.

'What's the matter?' Wolff scoured the woods frantically for signs of danger but there was nothing.

Then he heard it too: a distant boom, muffled as if by a blanket.

The two men looked stonily at each other. 'Canons!' said Wolff, through his teeth. Johann nodded silently. Then they summoned all their strength and made their way as fast as they could in the direction of the noise.

At last the forest thinned out and twilight peeped through the branches-there were flashes in the sky, followed by short bursts of cannon fire.

Reaching the edge of the wood, the two men stopped in their tracks and stared at the spectacle in front of them as if the curtain had just gone up on the opening scene of a play.

Before them lay the broad, fertile Po plain of Piedmont, bordered by the snow-covered Alps, which extended in the shape of a half-moon from the north, through the west and all the way to the south. The fields were tilled and the countryside looked as it if were settling down nicely for the night, were it not for the odd pillar of smoke coming from the far-flung villages, which spoke of terror.

It was not the baleful sight in the distance, however, that had caught Johann's attention but rather what was going on at the foot of the hill on which they were standing. Military units had taken up position to the north and west of a large, fortified city and had opened artillery fire.

'Looks like the Frenchies have made it to Turin,' remarked Wolff in a deadpan voice. Johann made no reply. He was glancing around, trying to get the lay of the land.

Turin itself was enclosed by an almost circular, jagged defence wall with dozens of ravelins and bastions and protected by a moat. Inside the city, the streets were laid out like a chessboard and there were towers and church spires, monuments and sweeping, blue-roofed palaces stretching up into the sky.

Johann could see isolated fires on some of the outbuildings of the defence wall, testimony to the doggedness of the besiegers, but they were insignificant in size and showed that the defence had things under control.

In the south west, the defence wall ended in a particularly massive bulwark-the citadel. The last place of refuge for a city on the brink of invasion, thought Johann.

But it had not got to that yet.

The city extended in the east to the banks of the Po, which were heavily fortified, preventing any attempt at a pincer movement.

'The city is impregnable,' exclaimed Wolff with admiration.

'Nothing is impregnable,' retorted Johann, 'but the death toll will be staggering. The man who built the fortress, what was his name?' Johann hesitated for a moment, then he snapped his fingers. 'Emanuele Filiberto, that's the chap. He did everything he could to ensure that besiegers had a tough time of it, including stuff we can't even see.' Johann pointed to the deep-rooted bushes planted on the glacis, making trench-digging a long and hard slog.

Wolff nodded and smiled. 'The defence wall looks the same as the one round Vienna. And that cooled off the Mussulmen pretty quickly.'

'Yeah, but that was twenty years ago and the Turks are not outstanding besiegers. But the French are.' Johann pointed to the northern side of the city, where there was an extensive encampment, with a system of trenches extending like a spider's web towards the city.

From there, mortars were being fired at the bastions.

Wolff looked at Johann with irritation. 'For a common soldier who's deserted his unit you're extraordinarily well versed in warfare. '

'Abbot Bernardin gave me a book or two about it. He believed that education should encompass matters beyond the walls of the monastery.'

'Well then, what's your assessment of the situation?'

'The siege will last a few more weeks, the approaches are not close enough yet to the defence walls. The miners won't be able to go to work till that's been done. Also, I don't believe what we see here is the whole of La Feuillade's army, that's said to comprise over forty thousand men, and I reckon there are not more than ten thousand men here.'

'A vanguard to test the strength of the defences.'

Johann nodded. 'Yes, to test their ability to stand up to mortars and miners and their resistance to a fatal disease.'

'If I were Gamelin, I'd simply catapult them in,' remarked Wolff.

Johann stared at him, taken aback.

'I didn't mean-' began Wolff hurriedly.

'That's okay, I know what you meant,' said Johann. 'But flinging people over 40-foot high walls would not be very effective for they'd be killed on impact. With plague corpses that wouldn't matter but Gamelin's sick have to stay alive long enough to spread the disease. A strategically better option would be to dig a mine in the city or in their trench system and then smuggle a few diseased people in.'

'But then the French might as well invade the city at the same time,' said Wolff, with a frown.

'So that everything ends in a bottleneck and the defence can calmly shoot the French one by one as they come out of the tunnel? You're a good soldier, Wolff, but you've got no idea about strategy.'

'My sweethearts wouldn't agree with you there, 'retorted Wolff drily.

Johann thumped him on the shoulder with a grin. 'We'll manage the last lap together, won't we?'

Wolff replied by walking off along the hillcrest to his left. He had only gone a couple of steps when he stopped short-a gold cross twinkled through the treetops.

Wolff gestured to Johann to be quiet. He ducked down and crept through the thick juniper bushes, which were a perfect cover. Johann followed him.

After a short while, they spied a drum-shaped building a bit like a cathedral but on a smaller scale with a gold cross on top of it. There was a longish building adjoining it.

Soldiers in grey infantry uniforms with blue lapels and black, three-cornered hats and armed with flintlock muskets were patrolling outside.

'Frenchmen,' whispered Wolff.

'Yeah, they're probably keeping an eye on the terrain for the artillery observers,' said Johann. 'Let's go back.'

The two men turned round and stopped suddenly: in front of them stood a man in a dark brown monk's cassock, which was fastened round his waist with a light cord. His cowl was pulled so far down over his face that his eyes were hidden and all that could be seen was his exuberant beard. In his right hand he was holding a wicker basket filled with berries.

'Pilgrims from Austria?' he asked, in a strong Italian accent.

Johann and Wolff nodded hastily.

The monk turned round and walked into the forest. Johann and Wolff looked at each other, unsure what to do. The monk waved at them impatiently. 'Follow me.'

As soon as they were out of sight of the cloister and the guards, the monk stopped and turned to them. He pushed back his cowl, revealing a well-groomed tonsure. A pair of piercing blue eyes looked at them. 'I assume you're not here just to enjoy the fresh Piedmont air. You'd better keep your voices down. By the look of your habits, you're clearly pretending to be something you're not. But I'm not interested in who or what you were back home. There's only thing I want to know: what are doing here?' The monk spoke with such authority that Wolff and Johann were taken aback.

'Well?' the monk asked impatiently.

For a second Johann thought of killing the man but then he quickly changed his mind. If he had wanted to betray them, all he had needed to do was call the soldiers.

'Captain Wolff from the Viennese Central Patrol,' said Wolff, standing to attention.

'Johann List. We're not after you or the French,' began Johann. 'But we're after something the French have got. Someone, I mean,' he added, hurriedly correcting himself.

The monk gave him such a piercing look that it felt to Johann as if he were peering...