The Spanish Bride (30 page)

Out of the tail of his eye, Harry saw the glitter of steel and knew that he was alone with a madman. He strolled forward into the vaulted apartment. ‘Well done indeed!’ he said coolly. ‘This is more wonderful than I ever dreamed of!’

‘I knew you would say so!’ cried Gonsalez gleefully. ‘Now we will drink death to all Frenchmen, eh?’

‘By all means!’ said Harry.

Gonsalez looked suspiciously at him. ‘You are pleased? You like it?’ ‘Immensely!’ Harry said fervently. ‘A noble deed! a miracle!’

‘Four of them!’ Gonsalez pointed out. ‘You see? I killed four with my own hand! It is a very good jest, is it not? Why don’t you laugh?’

‘Laugh? I don’t laugh at such feats as this!’ said Harry. ‘Come, let’s have a toast!’ He sat down on a cask, his foot almost touching one of the corpses: Gonsalez seemed satisfied. He set the lamp down, and began to draw off some wine into two mugs. While his back was turned, Harry took a look at the dead men. They were all of them dressed in dragoon uniforms, fine, big fellows, with their swords at their sides, and any one of them more than a match for their assassin. Each had been killed by knife-thrusts through the chest: a messy death, thought Harry, his nostrils quivering at the faint, creeping aroma of stale blood.

Gonsalez came up to him with the wine, stepping carelessly over the bodies of his victims. Harry took one of the mugs from him, and raised it. He was rather pleased to find that his hand was as steady as a rock, for a feeling of nausea was making his stomach turn over. ‘Here’s to your very good health!’ he said.

‘Death to the French!’ cried Gonsalez.

The wine was of excellent quality, which helped to quieten Harry’s stomach. He drank it all, and stood up. To his relief, Gonsalez made no objection to their leaving the cellar, but followed him out, locking the door behind him, and accompanying him up the stairs, to all appearances quite restored to his former good-humour.

‘How were you able to overpower four big fellows like that?’ Harry asked. ‘Oh, easily enough!’ replied Gonsalez, with a chuckle. ‘I pretended that I was an Afrancesado, and I proposed, after dinner, that we should drink to the extermination of the English!’ He paused, and Harry heard his teeth grind together. “The French rascals! They little guessed what I meant to do! I got them into the cellar, and gave them wine, and more wine, until they became so drunk that they fell. Then I killed them. Thus die all enemies to Spain!’

‘Shall you be going round to the General’s house after dinner?’ asked Juana, when Harry rejoined her. ‘Because, if so—’

‘I shall not,’ said Harry.

Juana saw that he was looking rather pale. ‘Are you ill?’, she exclaimed. ‘Tell me at once, is anything the matter?’

‘Matter? Lord, no! nothing in the world!’ said Harry. 7

The brigade left Offala next morning without Harry’s host having shown any signs of returning madness. Harry did not feel that four dead French dragoons were any concern of his, and as he rather liked Gonsalez, in his sane moments, he said nothing about the gruesome remains in his cellar.

The day’s march led the divisions into a beautiful, fruit growing district, past the great, hundred-arched Pampeluna viaduct. Cherries, and pears, and big red plums were to be had for a penny a pound; there were olive-groves on every side; and plenty of pork to be bought in all the villages. Everyone was pleased when the orders to halt for a day’s rest came. The divisions camped near the junction of the Tudela and the Saragossa roads, but nothing was seen or heard of Clausel’s advance. However, towards the end of the day, one of the Riflemen went to Harry’s quarters on a slim pretext, and asked: ‘Sir, is the order come?’ Harry was used to such visits, for he was known to be one of the army’s most accessible officers. ‘For what?’ he said. ‘An extra allowance of wine?’

‘No, sir, for an extra allowance of marching!” retorted the man, with a grin. ‘We’re to be off directly after these French chaps as expects to get to France without a kick up the backside from the Light division!’

‘So that,’ Harry said later to Cadoux, who had been invited to dine with the Smiths, ‘means that we are going to get orders. Hang me if I know where the men pick up their information, but they always know long before we do when a move is coming!’

‘Oh, what a bore!’ said Cadoux. ‘I was beginning to feel quite at home here.’ They had barely finished dinner when an orderly came in with a note from Vandeleur. ‘I told you so!’ said Harry. ‘Old Douro’s got wind of Clausel’s division. We’ve got to try and intercept him.’

Cadoux picked up his shako, and fastidiously smoothed its jaunty green tuft of feathers. ‘That will be very enjoyable,” he said. ‘You need not tell me the worst: I know it. We’re in for a night-march.’

‘Correct!’ said Harry.

The divisions reached Tafalla by dawn, a pretty town surrounded by olive groves; and, after a short rest, pressed on towards Olite, heading south all the way, towards the Aragon river. It began to rain again, and at Casada, where no cantonments were to be found for any but Staff-officers, everyone bivouacked amongst ploughed fields. ‘Ha!’ said Kincaid, eyeing the sodden trough which was to be his bed, ‘Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who would not to himself hose said, This is a confounded, comfortless dwelling!’ At Olite, the direction of the march was changed suddenly, the divisions bringing up their right shoulders towards Sanguessa.

‘Early up and never the nearer!’ grumbled Tom Crawley. ‘Damme, if the whole blurry division ain’t chasing its own tail!’

They found themselves marching through a district of tall pine woods. The straight trunks gleamed in the wet, and the leaves dripped ceaselessly on to the thick beds of last year’s needles. There was more night-marching, roundly cursed by the troops, who could not see a couple of yards ahead of them, and found the going painful.

‘Too much breaks the bag!’ said Humphrey Allen, ricking his ankle in an unsuspected pit full of water. ‘That’s done me to a cow’s thumb!’

‘Come on, Long Tom! We must be as near as be-damned to Johnny Crapaud, or Old Hookey wouldn’t go hounding us about in the dark,’ said a hopeful friend. ‘That’s right: we’ll be up with Johnny before the cat can lick her ear!’ ‘Stow your gab, there’s our Brigade-Major’s lady!’

Juana, who was limping rather painfully along the rough road, had had to dismount from Tiny. She looked very wet, and her foot, which was by no means well, was evidently hurting her. Vitty was at her heels, the picture of misery, for the little dog hated rain. ‘Here, missis!’ called out Tom Plunket, in tolerable Spanish. ‘You ought not to be walking with that foot of yours the way it is!’

‘No, but poor Tiny has gone very lame, and it is better that I should walk, for he cannot carry me on such a bad road.’

“That’s right, it’s not safe, not when you can’t see an inch before your nose,’ said Sergeant Brotherwood. ‘Only I was thinking one of us could help you along, señora, if you would condescend to take loan of an arm.”

‘No, no, you have enough to do without helping me! Besides, I can walk very well. Only I do not know where my husband has gone to. In fact, I have lost him.’

‘He’ll be around somewhere, don’t you worry, señora! Just stay with the column. I wouldn’t wonder if we was all lost, come to think of it.’

‘I see the Brigade-Major going up to the head of the column a while back,’ offered Josh Hetherington.

‘Oh well, then, everything is all right!’ said Juana.

No one in her audience, in however much esteem he held his Brigade-Major, could share her conviction that a knowledge of his whereabouts in any way improved the situation, but not even the sourest-tempered soldier said so.

Harry, contrary to his usual custom, was riding at the head of the brigade, which happened to be the leading one, in order to keep an eye on the guides. The column was approaching the Aragon river. There was a good bridge across the stream, but the approach to it was a little intricate, and as the first two battalions came across, Harry suggested to the General that the brigade should be ordered to form up, to be sure that all the battalions were present.

Vandeleur agreed to it. The first two battalions halted. Harry waited, but no column came in sight. He rode back towards the bridge hallooing, and heard a voice answering him from a long way off. In a few moments, he discovered that the voice belonged to Colonel Wade, an eccentric gentleman who was riding slowly along, with his bugler behind him. Harry galloped up to him. ‘Colonel, form up your battalion as soon as you reach the brigade!’ ‘By Jesus, we’re soon formed!’ replied Wade casually. ‘I and my bugler are alone.’ ‘Where’s the regiment?’ demanded Harry.

‘Upon my soul, and that’s what I would like to ask you!’

Harry gave an exclamation of impatience, and galloped on through the darkness towards the bridge. It was evident that an interval had been allowed to occur in the column, so that the rear battalion, losing sight of the van, had taken a wrong turning. Shades of Craufurd! thought Harry, reining in across the bridge, and peering about him. He could see nothing, but he thought he heard voices some way off. He rode on, along the road running beside the river, hallooing, and presently met the column, marching towards him.

‘Is that you, Smith? We missed the bridge, and had gone a good league out of our way before we found there had been a mistake.’

‘Where’s my wife?’ Harry shot out. ‘I don’t know: I haven’t seen her.’

Harry told him curtly to continue along the road till he came to a left-hand turning, and rode on. The road, which was little better than a mule-track, soon got so uneven that he was obliged to dismount, and to lead Old Chap. The column was straggling, and to keep out of the way of the infantry Harry led his horse on to the bank above the river. The first cold dawn-light was beginning to creep into the sky, but the rain kept coming down with unabated vigour. Part of the bank gave way suddenly under Harry’s feet; a flicker of lightning showed him the river surging over rocks thirty feet below him! He had the presence of mind to hold fast to the bridle, and Old Chap, frightened by the glimpse of the rushing waters below, reared up, and spun around on his hind legs, dragging Harry on to firm ground. As he was pulled up, he heard a shriek, and the next instant Juana was beside him, trembling with horror at the danger he had been in.

‘No harm done!’ Harry said. ‘Thank God, you’re safe! What’s the matter with Tiny?’ ‘Oh, he is dreadfully lame again! And, do you know, we took the wrong turning, and I heard you shouting, oh, a long way off! And then I thought I had lost Vitty!’

‘Never mind that now: go on and join Vandeleur! You’ll find him across the bridge. I’ve no time to look after you until I get this infernal muddle straightened out.’ ‘Muy bien!’ said Juana cheerfully.

It took Harry some time to collect his scattered brigade in the darkness, but the daylight soon made the task easier. Having delivered himself of some pithy comments on the battalions’ un-Craufurd-like progress, he rode back to where he had left his General. He found Vandeleur and Juana sitting on a sodden bank, Juana holding her umbrella over the General’s rheumaticky shoulder, and recounting to him in fluent French the tale of her adventures during the night.

‘Hallo, Harry!’ Vandeleur called. ‘I hope you damned the lot of them!’ ‘I did, of course, but the fact is it was no one’s fault,’ Harry replied. “The turn of the road to the bridge was very abrupt, and the road was too narrow to allow the Staff-officers to ride up and down the flank of the column, as they ought to. Juana, you’re wet to the skin!’ ‘Yes, but never mind! Charlie Gore says he shall give a ball when we get to Sanguessa, because it is now certain that we shall never catch the French in this bad weather.’ ‘I wish I had you in Sanguessa now!’ said Harry. ‘How far did you walk on that foot of yours?’ ‘I don’t know. Nada importa! But everyone wants to be in Sanguessa. Johnny Kincaid says that when we get there all our troubles will vanish.’

Sanguessa, an ancient town with rickety houses jostling one another in all the narrow streets, was reached later in the day, but although the Honourable Charles Gore, who was General Kempt’s ADC, and a young gentleman of means, at once made the most lavish preparations for his ball, and reported that the girls of Sanguessa were an uncommonly handsome set, the division’s troubles were not by any means over. Camps were pitched outside the town, and the usual difficulty of getting wood for firing arose. George Simmons being sent out with a party to collect sufficient for the division, was obliged to ask the local authorities for permission to pull down a disused building. This being granted, a very strenuous time was spent by the party, gathering every scrap of timber from amongst the debris, and loading it on to the mules. As ill-luck would have it, on their return journey they ran plump into General Picton, coming up at the head of the 3rd division. ‘You there!” Picton thundered, glaring at poor George. ‘What have you got on those mules, sir?’

‘

Firewood for the Light division, sir,” replied George, saluting.

‘Well, sir, you have got enough for my division and yours! I shall have it divided,’ said Picton, who hated the Light division. ‘Make your men throw it down! It is a damned concern to have to follow you cursed fellows! You sweep up everything before you!”

There was nothing for George to do but to obey. He gave the order to his men, while Picton sat his cob, looking the very picture of a burly ruffian. But as George’s party began with black scowls to unload the mules, George caught sight of General Alten, and slipped off to report the matter to him.