The Spanish Bride (22 page)

‘It appears to me extraordinary and un-Christian,’ said Don Pedro coldly. But when he saw how cleverly Juana had contrived comforts in the little cottage in Fuentes de Onoro, he thought that after all he would stay with the Smiths through the winter-months. Both Juana and Harry had begun to find him rather tiresome, but it turned out that he was a splendid cook, so the arrangement, irksome at times, had its compensations. Various messes had been formed amongst the officers, and with a little ingenuity, and plenty of wine procured from Lamego, it was surprising how jolly and comfortable even a barn with half the roof swept off by a cannon-ball could be. Charcoal braziers kept one warm; a little boarding and a great deal of baize excluded the worst draughts; and a good mess-president saw to it that there was always plenty of pork in the larder, however little beef he was able to procure. The local pork was very sweet and rich; there was mullet in the Agueda; and dried Newfoundland ling to be bought from the sutlers; and those who knew the district said that there would be good trout-fishing in the spring.

As soon as any mess had fitted up its room tolerably well, the next thing to be done was to send out invitations for a bolero meeting. These were held throughout the winter, and very amusing they were. All the local ladies came to them, dressed in their brown stuff bodices, and with their petticoats stuck all over with patches of red cloth. They taught the English officers how to dance the fandango, how to manipulate the castanets, and the correct height of the elbow in the bolero; and the officers taught them the way to romp through Sir Roger de Coverley. There was always plenty of hot punch; and the meetings were apt to become rather rowdy towards midnight; but the only real objection to them was the reek of garlic which the ladies brought with them.

Juana, as much a foreigner in León as any Englishman, learned one of the country measures to dance at the wedding of her landlord. He was marrying for the second time, but the festivities stretched over three days, and were conducted on a scale of great magnificence. If you went to a wedding in this part of the country, you took your present with you, and gave it to the bride during one of the dances. She held a knife in her hand, with an apple on top of it, and provided your gift was of suitable size, you cut a slice out of the apple and stuffed your offering into the gap. Juana begged a doubloon from Harry to give to the bride. It was thought to be a very handsome present, and everyone said that in spite of being an Estremenha Juana had very proper notions, and was the kind of girl anyone would be glad to welcome to his house.

3

By Christmas, everybody except those who still filled the hospitals to overflowing, had settled down into the usual winter routine. The weather was very cold, sometimes wet, sometimes snowy, occasionally foggy, but provided one got plenty of exercise this was not much of a hardship. While Staff-officers followed his lordship’s hounds, others, not so well provided with mounts, took shot-guns out, and tramped for miles after woodcock, or went coursing with Harry on plains that teemed with hares. The rank-and-file went rabbiting with ferrets and a native pack of mongrels and harriers. They enjoyed far better sport than his lordship did, for they never came home empty-handed, while it was well known that his lordship’s hounds had only killed one fox that season, and that by mobbing. Foxes used to head for the banks of the Coa, and go to ground in holes in the rocks, but as his lordship hunted more for exercise than for sport, that never seemed to worry him. Headquarters amusements were voted very tame by the gay Light Bobs. To begin with, Frenada was a flea-ridden village, with dung between all the cobble-stones, and refuse from the cottages cast out into the street. Most of the houses were in a state of decay, and not even his lordship’s headquarters were weather-tight. His secretaries, having stopped the rickety windows, were obliged to work by candlelight all day, and even then their fingers were often numbed by the cold. Most of the houses were of the pattern common to the district: whitewashed dwellings with stables beneath. There was only one lady at headquarters that winter, Mrs Scovell, who gave evening loo-parties from time to time. His lordship kept open house, of course, and a very good table besides (he would pay as much as eight shillings for a hare); but it was only the great men who were invited to his dinners. There were rather too many great men at Frenada for comfort, thought the rest of the army. The Leg of Mutton, and the Cauliflower, the only decent inns in the place always teemed with Staff-officers, some of them very good sort of men, but too many of them conceited young sprigs, doing the dandy in velvet-forage caps with gold tassels, grey-braided coats and fancy waistcoats of every colour of the rainbow. Several of these ‘Counts’, as the army called the dandies, were his lordship’s aides-de-camp, and by no means conciliating in their manner towards regimental officers. Of course, if you had the luck to run into Lord March, or Ulysses de Burgh, or Fitzroy Somerset, you would carry away with you the kindest memories of old Douro’s family; but it was quite a puzzle to know how his lordship had come to choose some of the other young suckers to be his aides-de-camp.

Then there were the servants: a shocking set of idle good-for-nothings, swarming all over the town, loud-voiced in the sutlers’ shops, drunk in the posadas, overbearing with the villagers. If you wanted to get a few plates from the tinman, you had actually to force your way through a clamorous crowd of batmen at his door: and if you tried to buy some writing-paper at the sutler’s, it was all Lombard Street to an eggshell some Staff-officer’s pert private servant would snap up the last quire of English cream-laid from under your very nose, leaving you to pay an extortionate price for the thin, cross-grained folio made in the country. But if you wanted to hear the latest news, or to see an English newspaper before it was months old, you did your shopping at Frenada rather than at Almeida. You picked up the latest songs there, too: there were two much in vogue that winter, and it was odd if you spent an hour in Frenada without hearing either Ah, quel plaisir d’etre soldat, or Ahé, Marmont, hummed in the streets. Very good tunes they were: it was said that old Douro was particularly fond of Ahé, Marmont, and often called for it at his parties. Old Douro left Frenada in December, and went off to Cadiz for six weeks. Small blame to him! said his troops, Spreading scandalous stories of his supposed activities there. The wonder was that any man, with the power of choosing his ground, should have selected Frenada for his headquarters. What was left of you, after the fleas and the bugs had eaten their fill, was blown away by the bitter winds that swept through the streets; and there was not a woman in the place worth looking at. Good luck to his lordship, the old dog! with the pick of the southern beauties at Cadiz to share his bed!

Although Frenada might be an unappetizing town, the country round it was extremely picturesque, particularly in the vicinity of the Coa, a wild river running between masses of weathered rocks, through grand ravines, and bordered by stunted trees, and the ruins of once fortified villages. Rather reminiscent of Mrs Radcliffe’s tales, some thought, with far too many wolves for comfort. It was not at all the kind of country you could fancy settling in. All very well for lovers of the romantic, but a plain man would prefer a more placid and a richer countryside. One of the greatest difficulties was to get sufficient fodder for your horses. All the mules had to be sent away for forage; and barley (if you could get it) was shockingly dear. Staff-officers at Frenada said that his lordship talked quite openly of wintering in the district next year; and when it was pointed out to him that the army had eaten up nearly all the available bullocks, he replied with his neigh of a laugh: ‘Well then, we must now set about eating all the sheep, and when they are gone, I suppose we must go.’ 4

By the New Year, all the sierras were white with snow, and the weather had become extremely inclement. The soldiers had formed a Trigger Club at Espeja, but the Riflemen had had to give up playing their favourite game of Nine Holes: it was really too cold, and the ground too rough to make it worth while. There was still much sickness, but many had managed to escape from the hospitals and rejoin their regiments. Most of the convalescents suffered from intermittent agues, which made their teeth chatter Eke castanets. Joe Simmons, proudly wearing a pair of Rifle wings, was still far from well, but George, who had begun his career by studying medicine, was taking great care of him, and hoped to have him in good fighting trim when the spring came. Meanwhile, he was keeping his nose to the grindstone. Joe was made to study for five hours a day. He grumbled a little, but as his second brother, Maud, was out of reach, there was no one to encourage him to revolt, and he submitted with a good grace. George was able to tell his parents that he had grown quite two inches, and was learning to apply.

Some Spaniards had been recruited for the Light division, and those responsible for the task reported that they were being tolerably well licked into shape. They were rather like the Portuguese in one respect: if they were commanded by their own officers they would be just as likely to retreat in disorder as to advance; but if you put good English officers amongst them they did very well. In time, they might become as reliable as the Portuguese Caçadores Marshal Beresford had made into such splendid troops. There were other innovations, notably the exchange of the great iron kettles for lighter and smaller tin ones. Apparently, his lordship having had tine to recover from the rage which had governed him when he had written his Memorandum to officers commanding Divisions and Brigades, had realized how much the unwieldy nature of his soldiers’ kettles was to blame for their dilatoriness in cooking their meals. The new kettles were hailed with acclaim, and so too were the shakos for officers’ wear, in place of the cocked-hats which had made them targets for every French sharpshooter.

It was thought that no advance into Spain could be expected until May, since the horses would need at least a month’s green feed before they would be fit for another campaign. Remounts were being sent out from England, of course, and fresh troops to replace the depleted second battalions, which had gone home to the depots.

Meanwhile, life went on much as usual in the army. A number of men acquired Spanish or Portuguese mistresses, so that the hoard of camp-followers was becoming oddly polygot. They quarrelled even more violently than the Irish women, and could not be trusted to refrain from using knives as weapons when they were angry, but the stews which they cooked in their earthenware penellas made it worth while putting up with their murderous tendencies. All Spanish women were expert in the management of the penella, which stood day in, day out, at the side of the fire, and was turned from time to time. Juana, taking lessons from the Padre, learned to make a stew the very smell of which set one’s mouth watering. But when Billy Mein, riding over to dine with the Smiths, asked her what she put in the pot to give it such a flavour, she never seemed to know, but answered vaguely: ‘Oh, un poco de aceyte y una cabeza de ajos!’ But since her stews all tasted different, no one believed this, and ‘a little oil and a clove of garlic’ became a standing-joke, the stock-answer to any culinary question.

Billy Mein was often to be found in the Smiths’ quarters. He used to ride into Fuentes de Onoro to drink grog made of bad rum with Harry. Major Rowan was a frequent visitor, too, bringing news of the regiment’s Colonel, who had been invalided to England after the taking of Ciudad Rodrigo. The men of the 52nd would not be happy until Colonel Colborne was in command of them again, for there was no officer who more thoroughly understood outpost work, none more beloved. ‘Oh, for Colborne!’ they groaned, whenever anything went amiss. But he had had his shoulder so badly shattered in the assault on Rodrigo that it was doubtful whether he ever would return to the Peninsula.

At the end of January, the troops had the satisfaction of knowing that Beau Douro was amongst them again. The sight of his well-known figure had always a most cheering effect upon the army. It was hoped his lordship had enjoyed himself, junketing about Cadiz: he looked very well, and seemed to be in excellent spirits, so no doubt he meant to give King Joseph some hard knocks in the coming campaign.

Early in February, much to their disgust, the Smiths had to leave their billet in Fuentes de Onoro, to go with General Vandeleur to Fuente Guinaldo. Brigade headquarters had been moved there, to make room for the Spanish headquarters in Fuentes de Onoro. No one appreciated the change, for it was much colder at Guinaldo, besides being twenty-four miles distant from Frenada. The Smiths would have taken the Padre with them, but he had made up his mind to go back to Vicalbaro. Perhaps he was tired of cooking. At Guinaldo, Vandeleur was busy with Courts Martial. He had made the acquaintance of the new Judge-Advocate, a civilian, but a very pleasant fellow, who came over from Frenada on a handsome black horse, and seemed to be astonished at the army’s way of life. Since he happened to be spending the night in Vandeleur’s quarters, he accompanied him to a masked ball given by the officers of the Light division. All the belles of Guinaldo were present, some dressed as English officers: an indelicate frolic which rather shocked Mr Larpent: and all of them remarkably free and easy with the gay Light Bobs. Indeed, one plump, seductive creature was the cause of a minor disturbance, for she cuddled into the arms of Vandeleur’s why young Brigade-Major, in a convenient alcove, and cooed gently to him, with her cheek against the frogs on his jacket. The Brigade-Major’s eyes gleamed laughter between the slits of his mask; he did not seem to be unresponsive to his partner’s advances, judging from the way his arm encircled her waist; but while Mr Larpent idly watched him, a little stormy creature descended upon the Brigade-Major in a sudden flurry of fringed petticoats, and dealt him a ringing box on the ear. The Brigade-Major jumped up, shaking off the plump lady, and looking as though he would very much like to return the slap. His assailant addressed him in a torrent of low-voiced Spanish, which Mr Larpent was unable to understand; he shot out a rapid answer in the same tongue, and just as Mr Larpent, quite scandalized, moved forward to intervene, a very tall man in Rifle green strolled up, and swept the little dark creature into a waltz that was just starting.