Fortune's Bride (16 page)

The march from Lavos to Lugar the next day was, for
Esmeralda, much the same as that from Figueira to Lavos. For the men there were
differences. A far stricter watch was kept by the officers all along the route,
and fewer fell out of ranks. Problems in the quarters were much the same but
were easier to deal with because of past experience, and Robert was much more
cautious about entering rooms without announcing himself so there were no further
embarrassing incidents, a little to Esmeralda’s regret. On August 10 they came
to Leiria.

This was a town of modest size rather than a village. Sir
Arthur took over a decent inn, and all of the officers had clean and
comfortable lodgings. The state of the men was not as good. When they had
camped near villages, the people, either because they were truly glad to see
the English or as a preventive measure, had been most hospitable. They had
carried fruit out to the camps, oranges, melons, grapes, and figs, and even
brought calves to be slaughtered to add to the salt meat and biscuit the men
were issued. The townsfolk of Leiria were not so generous.

There was a magazine of supplies in the town, collected by
the Portuguese authorities for the sustenance of the troops. However, it was
seized by General Freire, who then refused to share it with the English. He
also refused to cooperate further with Sir Arthur, insisting that the English
supply any Portuguese troops who followed the coast road. Sir Arthur refused to
do this, partly because he did not think it reasonable but also because he did
not think most of the Portuguese troops reliable enough to be of much
assistance. Eventually a compromise was reached. About two hundred sixty of the
Portuguese cavalry and sixteen hundred infantry were to accompany the English
under the command of Colonel Trant. The remainder of Freire’s army was to
remain near Leiria to protect Sir Arthur’s rear.

Robert was so busy and so furious that he had no time to
ponder any personal concerns. He was aware only subliminally of the comfort
Esmeralda brought him by providing for his physical needs and by listening
sympathetically to the tirades it was not safe to express elsewhere. As one of
the senior ADCs, it was Robert’s duty to soothe the younger men so that they
would not show their true feelings even by cold looks or haughty manners and
complicate or perhaps ruin Sir Arthur’s negotiations. Had Robert not had
Esmeralda to confide in, he might have burst.

Over the days of the march, owing partly to conversations
with Robert, partly to her casual snippets of talk with the young officers, and
partly to the tales and anecdotes she heard from Molly and her husband,
Esmeralda had begun to identify with the army. Thus, her response to Robert became
deeper and more sincere. The army became
her
army, and she encouraged
Robert to tell her everything he could because of genuine interest rather than
because she wished to please him.

As a result, Esmeralda’s indignation about the treatment
they were receiving from Freire was sincere, but she was herself so happy that
she could always see a small advantage here and there to ameliorate the
problems Robert described. Her days were very full. Good fabrics were to be had
to make gowns. Robert’s friends and many of the young officers from the
regiments were very much at home in her apartment. Carlos was there to be
taught both English and the fine points of being an excellent servant.

Only two shadows clouded Esmeralda’s serene sky. One had
existed from the beginning, how was she to make her marriage real? The other
was new. As the army became more real to her, its purpose also became more
real. The English were in Portugal to make war on the French. Men died in war.
Too often now, when Esmeralda talked and laughed with the young men who sought
comfort and entertainment in her quarters, a chill of fear would pass over her.
And Robert… He, too, was flesh and blood. He, too, was vulnerable.

Late in the evening of August 12, the second of Esmeralda’s
clouds gathered substance and blotted out the brightness in her life. She knew
that something important was about to happen because none of her usual guests
showed up for tea and Robert was unusually late in returning after dinner, but
she was at first fooled by Robert’s sparkling eyes and brilliant smile,
especially since it was quite apparent that the gaiety was not owing to drink.

“Something has gone right at last, I see,” she said. “Can
you tell me?”

“We are moving out tomorrow,” Robert replied, tossing his
hat into the nearest chair. “And we will be rid of General Freire.”

“I am delighted we will be shot of Freire.” Esmeralda
laughed and shook her head. “But I cannot quite match your enthusiasm for
leaving Leiria if we are to be again quartered in villages.” Nonetheless, she
was smiling as brightly as he. If Robert was happy, a few fleas were nothing to
Esmeralda.

“Oh, you won’t be going—at least, not tomorrow,” Robert told
her. “Sir Arthur is leaving most of the baggage train here until we have some
definite news of the French.”

It was lightly said as Robert walked toward the table where
several bottles of wine and glasses stood ready, but Esmeralda caught a
peculiar sidelong glance from him as he went by the chair in which she was
sitting. She rose to her feet as he passed and barely prevented herself from
catching at him. It was the look that held her back; she took warning from it
and choked down the impulse to throw her arms around him and plead to be taken
along. By now Esmeralda knew enough about military matters to understand that
if Sir Arthur had decided to leave his baggage train behind, it was not just
news of the French he expected to find, but their army.

Fighting the terror that threatened to choke her, Esmeralda
said, “You will not leave me for long, will you? I-I will be very eager for
news.”

Robert turned toward her, smiling. He had almost expected
her to say, “Thank God,” or just, “Oh, very well.” Instead, her statement that
she was eager for news gave him an intense pleasure that he did not understand,
but he just accepted the warmth and gladness as part of the general feeling of
joy Esmeralda produced in him. The clear thought in his mind was that Merry was
the most perfect girl. She never made a fuss.

“Perhaps I could come back tomorrow night,” Robert said. “We
won’t have moved too far for me to ride in if I can get leave from Sir Arthur.”

“Oh, please do, Robert,” Esmeralda cried. She was about to
say she would be worried sick if he did not come, but she bit that back,
remembering that she had resolved not to ask for any attention that if
necessarily neglected would place a burden of guilt on him. Instead, she added,
“And if there is no sign of the French, I could move forward with you in the
morning, could I not?”

“I suppose that would be safe enough,” Robert replied
slowly, again feeling inordinately pleased, but then his conscience smote him.
“But why should you? You will be more comfortable here.”

“I was only joking about the bad accommodation in the
villages, truly I was,” Esmeralda assured him, struggling to prevent a note of
pleading from entering her voice. “If I move up, you see, I will still be in
reach the following day…” She hesitated, unsure of how far it would be safe to
go, and then said uncertainly, “Unless it would be too much trouble for you to
ride back each night like that.”

“No trouble at all.” Without analyzing the idea, he knew he
would go as far as necessary to join Esmeralda.

They discussed the route the army would take and the fact
that he and Esmeralda would have to be on the road just at dawn to be certain
that Robert would arrive at Sir Arthur’s headquarters, wherever it might be, by
the time his commanding officer might want him. A number of practical
complications arose from Robert’s spending his nights apart from the other ADCs,
but he soon found a reason for his eagerness to involve himself in so much
trouble.

“It will be much easier for me, too, if I ride down with you
in the morning,” Esmeralda had just assured him, laughingly. “That way I will
have the whole day to get the fleas out of the place instead of only a few
hours, and you will not return to find me most improperly clad.”

Robert laughed, too, but a disconcerting vision of Esmeralda
in pantalets rose again in his mind. He blanked out the vision most firmly.
Of
course
, he told himself,
it is perfectly reasonable to look forward to
decent lodgings. An hour’s ride is well worth a full night’s sleep and an
escape from scratching all the next day
.

In any event, Robert did not take Esmeralda with him the
next day. There was no place for her to stay. Sir Arthur himself had found
nothing better than a miserable mud hut, and when Robert left, the staff had
been settling down to sleep—if it could be called sleep—under a nearby tree.

“They called me all the names they could think of when I got
permission to come back,” he said, laughing. “Sir Arthur wasn’t pleased, but he
conceded that it was necessary to reassure you that all was well, so long as I
was on duty by six.”

“I won’t mind staying wherever Sir Arthur was,” Esmeralda offered.
“We have the cots, and I can load Luisa with food. Molly would follow me, too,
I’m sure.”

Robert shook his head firmly, insisting that the place was
not fit for her. She did not argue, only lowered her eyes to her hands, which
were tightly clasped in her lap. Somehow Robert could not say the words he had
planned, which were that in a few days, as soon as they found a satisfactory
place to camp, the whole baggage train would follow since it would be necessary
to bring supplies. Instead, he laughed and told her that he was growing
addicted to the fleshpots of Leiria himself and would come for her the next
night if it were possible.

As he said it, he wondered if he were mad. It would mean
riding twenty miles in the dark after a full day of scouting the road ahead and
riding up and down the line of march with messages and reprimands from
Wellesley to his line officers. But Merry’s beautiful eyes had risen to his,
glowing with gratitude when she said she knew she was being ridiculous and that
he must not put himself to so much trouble to satisfy her whim. So Robert
laughed again and said not to worry about that.

They reached Alcobaça on August 14 and learned that a
brigade of the French army under Thomières had been there until the preceding
day and that General Delaborde was somewhere to the south in the area of Óbidos
with a weak division. Clearly the French were drawing together and would make
contact within a day or two.

Robert was aware of an unaccustomed dichotomy in his
emotions when he heard these reports. Normally the information that action was
near thrilled him. After a battle, when he saw the dead and, more particularly,
the wounded, he felt regrets, but beforehand he thought only of the excitement,
of the thunder of the guns and the exhilaration of riding with messages and
seeing the results of the troop move­ments. This time he also felt a sharp pang
of disappointment. Perhaps it would be unwise to bring Merry so close to the
action.

Almost immediately Robert banished the disappointing doubts.
Merry would not be near the action at all. Thomières was no longer in the area.
Óbidos was over seventeen miles south of Alcobaça. Surely she would be in no
more danger staying in Alcobaça than in Leiria. If they retreated—and Robert
did not really believe that any retreat would be necessary, the troops were in
good condition, morale was high, and Sir Arthur had not yet lost a battle—Merry
would be well in advance of retrograde movement. Thus, it would be perfectly
safe to bring her to Alcobaça.

When Robert again asked permission to return to Leiria, Sir
Arthur looked at him most peculiarly, however, since there were several other
officers in the room, he did not comment cynically about Robert’s being
surprisingly attentive for a husband engaged in a marriage of convenience,
which he might have done had they been alone. Nor did he make any objection to
the request because Robert had been waiting that morning with the other ADCs
when Sir Arthur had finished shaving and been ready to give orders. In fact,
Sir Arthur was beginning to believe that what had started as an act of duty had
turned into a love affair. A romantic himself, although he kept his soft heart
very well hidden, Sir Arthur felt considerable empathy with his handsome young
ADC. If he wished to spend a last night with his love, why not?

Had Sir Arthur known that Robert intended to bring his wife
south, he might have remonstrated, but no mention was made of that. It was not
a conscious omission on Robert’s part. He had reasoned it all out, and it seemed
logical enough to him. To his mind it was silly to annoy Sir Arthur with
unessential, personal details. Nor, for the same reason, did Robert mention the
next morning when he appeared for duty that Esmeralda had taken over the
quarters that the ADCs had just vacated.

To Robert’s mind, Merry had listened to the news of the
proximity of the French army with absolute indifference, and she had agreed
with complete conviction with Robert’s analysis of the situation. In fact,
Esmeralda believed Robert was right, but she knew she would have agreed with
equal fervor even if he had told her the sky was bright red and that the
officers would attack riding flying pigs instead of horses. Not that she was
still ignorant of the ways of war. She realized that a total rout completely
out of control might endanger her, even as far as seventeen miles away. However
even if she had thought certain destruction very likely and had been terrified,
Esmeralda would have pretended indifference.

Having heard that action was imminent, she was determined to
be near Robert. If he should be hurt, she intended to nurse him. It was her
conviction, from stories she had heard, that as many wounded died from neglect
and the inadequate medical facilities as died from the effects of the wounds themselves.
And actually, Esmeralda was not at all afraid. Her military opinions having
been molded by Robert and his friends, she was even more confident than Robert
that the British would be victorious in any action Sir Arthur decided to
undertake. It was not herself, safe in Alcobaça, for whom she feared.