A Gallows-Bird

A Gallows-Bird by Bernard Capes

In 1809, during the siege of Saragossa, General Junot sends the resourceful young French captain Eugène Ducos alone into the hills to discover salt mines needed by the army. Disguised as a wounded English officer after an escape, Ducos encounters Anita, a girl living as the goatherd Ambrosio. She recognises him as Eugenio, her former lover, whose child she believes she carries. Having been driven from home after her father discovered Ducos’s letter, she has spent seven months among the hills waiting for him. Ducos accepts her devotion while using her knowledge. Anita warns him that the mountains contain guerrillas, the ruined monastery of St. Ildefonso, her disturbed master Don Manoel di Cangrejo, and a tribunal of women who punish spies and traitors. She tells him that a man accused of betraying hidden piastres is to be hanged by the tribunal, though she does not know where the treasure is concealed. Ducos insists on witnessing the execution. At the tribunal’s pit and gibbet, he takes the cloak from a hanged body, arranges ropes beneath it, and suspends himself as a convincing counterfeit corpse, with Anita assisting him. When the tribunal arrives, he overhears a Carmelite taunt the condemned man, Carlos, by revealing that the piastres are hidden in the salt mines of the Little Hump. The women torture Carlos, while the priest accidentally kills himself when his overloaded pistol bursts. Ducos is wounded in the leg by the explosion but escapes with Anita. As they flee, Ducos briefly becomes violently deranged and almost attacks Anita, but is struck unconscious. He wakes three days later in Cangrejo’s mountain cabin. Cangrejo, believing him to be an English officer, has nursed him and curses the French with solemn intensity. He recounts the rumour that a corpse at the gallows walked away with the help of a goatherd. Ducos pretends continued weakness while recovering and conceals his identity. When Cangrejo leaves for a secret council, Anita visits Ducos. She tells him where the Little Hump and its salt mine lie. Ducos uses her guidance to fix the route in his mind, then sends her away so that he can escape alone and bring French troops to seize the treasure. On the path he meets de la Platière, another Frenchman disguised as a one-eyed Romany beggar. Ducos gives him the details of the treasure and arranges for him and his men to wait near the Pampeluna road before sunset. Returning to Cangrejo’s cabin, Ducos finds Anita absent and fears she may have betrayed him. At night he sees a lantern below at the Little Hump and descends. Hidden among rocks, he finds Anita captured by armed guerrillas. The alguazil demands that she reveal the whereabouts of her French lover. Her father, Pignatelli, rejects her as his child, while Cangrejo desperately urges her to betray Ducos in order to save herself. Anita refuses, and the guerrillas suspend her by her thumbs beneath the lantern. Ducos watches, waiting for her cries to conceal his own escape. When she finally screams, he joins de la Platière and the French force approaching from the road. De la Platière hesitates to fire because Anita hangs between the two sides. Ducos dismisses her danger, takes command, and orders the volley. The French gunfire scatters the Spaniards, and Anita’s body convulses briefly before hanging motionless.

By Bernard Capes · First published 1896 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Napoleonic War Fiction, Historical Adventure Fiction · 9,842 words

First lines

In February of the year 1809, when the French were sat down before Saragossa-then enduring its second and more terrific siege within a period of six months-it came to the knowledge of the Duc d'Abrantes, at that time the General commanding, that his army, though undoubtedly the salt of the earth, was yet so little sufficient to itself in the matter of seasoning, that it was reduced to the necessity of flavouring its soup with the saltpetre out of its own cartridges. In this emergency, d'Abrantes sent for a certain Ducos, captain on the staff of General Berthier, but at present attached to a siege train before the doomed town, and asked him if he knew whence, if anywhere in the vicinity, it might be possible to make good the deficiency.

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Peninsular War · Siege of Saragossa · Spain in 1809 · Napoleonic Wars · French military officers · Spanish guerrillas · Pyrenean mountains · wartime espionage · disguise and impersonation · salt mines · hidden treasure · betrayal

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A Gallows-Bird is listed on Textopian as a short story by Bernard Capes, dated 1896 CE.

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