Georgette Heyer - The Spanish Bride

‘Lord, I don’t know, sir!” said Harry cheerfully. ‘Where are those guides of yours?’

‘Plundering the baggage-train for anything I know. Shall I give the order to bivouac, sir?’ ‘Damn it, no, we’ll push on! I wish I hadn’t started this march, but I did, and we’ll finish it. Get on, Harry, get on! Find those fellows of yours, and tell ’em I’ll have the hide off their backs if they don’t discover the right road!’

‘I’ve sent out a scouting-party, sir.’

Vandeleur grunted. ‘Very well. The devil’s in it I was a little bosky tonight. But the trouble with you, Harry, is that you think you command the brigade!’

Harry grinned. ‘I got in the way of it with General Drummond, sir. “Have you any orders for the pickets, sir?” I asked him, the first day I met him. “Pray, Mr Smith, are you my Brigade-Major?” says he. “I believe so sir.”-“Then, let me tell you,” says he, “it’s your duty to post the pickets, and mine to have a damned good dinner for you every day!” so that’s how we went on: he cooked the dinner, and I commanded the brigade.’

The leading column of the division reached Alcala at dawn, and the men bivouacked in the streets. An air of unrest brooded over the town; no one at Alton’s headquarters seemed to have any precise information, but the sudden countermarch from Arganda so plainly pointed to a retreat, that Harry, in despair of getting any money from the war-chest, sold the Irish horse which he had bought before Badajos from his General. He got a fine big Andalusian in exchange for Paddy, and three Spanish doubloons as well, which he handed over in triumph to Juana.

The 30th October saw the division bivouacking in a suburb of Madrid, by the Segovia Gate. There was by this time no question of any part of the army’s remaining in the capital. Nothing was talked of but a long retreat to the frontier. Wellington had failed in four costly attempts on Burgos, and Staff-officers from his headquarters reported that there was a great deal of sickness amongst his men. He was withdrawing across the Douro, and had sent orders to Hill to evacuate Madrid, and to retreat, not by way of the valley of the Tagus, but across the Guadarrama Pass to Areveto.

No sooner had the news of the impending retreat broken upon the unfortunate Madrileños than scenes of the most painful distress harrowed the feelings of men already bitterly disappointed at this end of their brilliant campaign. A moan of despair went up from the town; the soldiers were implored not to leave Madrid to the mercy of the French; weeping women clung round the knees of embarrassed officers; and when it was realized that no entreaties could avail against the positive orders of the Commander-in-chief, the feelings of the mob veered suddenly, and the British became, overnight, objects of Spanish hatred. There were one or two ugly incidents, and some rioting; and the baggage-train of the army was swollen with refugees who preferred to undertake the ardours of marching with the army than to remain in Madrid to be punished by the French for the welcome they had extended to Lord Wellington.

The division remained outside Madrid for a few hours only, but. for long enough to allow Juana to discover an irreparable loss. She had lost the three Spanish doubloons. Such a scene as Harry entered upon when he had joined Juana at the bivouac! His wife was in tears, Jenny Bates was storming at Joe Kitchen, and Joe was stubbornly defending himself against a charge of gross carelessness.

‘Jupiter! What’s all this?’ Harry had demanded.

Three people had told him, but he only attended to one of them. ‘Oh, mi Enrique, our money has gone!’

‘Good God, is that all?’ said Harry. ‘I thought you had broken your leg at least!’ He drove Jenny and Joe Kitchen away, but he could not console his vivacious wife, who, from having been in the gayest spirits, was plunged in the deepest misery. ‘I put them in your portmanteau, between your shirts! Oh, what a fool I was! I thought they would be so safe! Oh, do not speak to me! I am so ashamed!’

‘Cheer up, hija! We can always live on our rations.’

‘It was all the money you had, and I have lost it!’ wept Juana, pushing him away. ‘Why, you little goose, what do you think I care for that?’ said Harry, laughing at her. ‘Kiss me, and forget the money!’

But it was many hours before she could be persuaded to stop blaming herself, and she might indeed have continued to brood over her folly indefinitely had not a diversion offered, in the person of their clerical acquaintance, the Vicar of Vicalbaro, who presented himself at the bivouac, and, drawing Harry aside, begged to be taken under his wing. ‘Why, what’s this, Padre?’ Harry said. ‘You don’t mean to march with us?’ ‘I do, if you will let me join you,’ replied Don Pedro earnestly. ‘The fact is that I have in the past made myself so obnoxious to the French, that I dare not stay in my parish. I have come to crave your protection, amigo.’

Harry could not help laughing at him. ‘It’s yours, for what it’s worth. But what do you think I can do for you?’

‘You can take me with you,’ said Don Pedro. ‘I have brought a bundle with me. You know what a hatred I bear the French! No, really, my dear friend, I am afraid to stay in Vicalbaro! You have no idea what things I have said about them!’

‘Oh, haven’t I, by Jove! But are you sure you know what campaigning means? It will be no joke, I assure you. Here we are, almost into November, with the rainy season upon us, and the devil of a march before us! No snug evenings round a comfortable hearth, you know: the only fires we’re likely to see will be camp ones. Ten to one, we’ll be fighting a rearguard action all the way, into the bargain.’

Don Pedro struck an attitude. ‘I am young and healthy, like yourselves. What you suffer, I can! My only fear is that I may inconvenience you, and my young countrywoman, your wife.’ ‘Is that all?’ said Harry. He lifted his voice: ‘Juana! Ohe, Juana!’

Juana came running. ‘You have found the money!’ she cried eagerly. ‘No, nothing of the sort! But see whom we have here, hija! The poor Padre fears for his life to stay near Madrid. Shall we take him along with us?’

The thought of Don Pedro’s sharing all the hardships of winter campaigning with them instantly woke Juana’s sense of fun. She said: ‘Oh, my dear Padre, how would you do without your comfortable chair, and your books, and all your pictures, and furnishings?’ ‘It is a sacrifice!’ sighed Don Pedro, shaking his head. ‘But I am in great dread of the French! I have very bad nights, quite sleepless, I assure you!’

‘That is bad,’ Juana said. ‘But if you come with us you will have much worse ones, I think. For I must tell you, that there will be very little to eat, and if you are not clever at stealing pigs and hens there will be nothing!’

Don Pedro looked quite horrified. ‘But, señora, you would not expect me to steal!’ he said. ‘Consider my habit! I-I really do not think I should!’

‘You will starve, then,’ Juana replied, solemn as a judge. ‘Then you must know that we shall have to swim across the rivers-all the rivers-and bivouac in the rain, and also Enrique is very severe upon the march.”

‘I do not regard any of those hardships,’ said the Padre unhappily, ‘but only that I should incommode you.’

‘She’s quizzing you, Padre: don’t pay any heed to her! What do you say, hija? Shall we take him along with us?”

‘Why, I think we should indeed, for perhaps the French would be unkind to him if we left him behind!’

‘Señora!’ The Padre seized her hand to kiss it. ‘You are all goodness! What shall I do? Must I have a pony? Should I buy a mule also?’

Juana thought that his one small bundle, which contained, he said, a few shirts, could be carried on a pony, but told him to be sure and buy a warm cloak. Leaving his untidy package in the Smiths’ tent, he darted off, sped on his way by teasing adjurations from Juana not to be gone long, or he would find on his return that the division had vanished. He came back presently, dragging a reluctant pony, and draped in such a voluminous cloak mat Juana was thrown into a fit of giggling. Charlie Eeles happened to be outside the Smiths’ tent when he arrived, and he naturally lost no time in spreading the news of the addition to Harry’s household through the division, where it was greeted with uproarious ribaldry. ‘Harry Smith will do now he has a father confessor!’ declared his friends.

It was distressing, marching away from Madrid, and everyone was glad, since there was no help for the retreat when the columns drew out of reach of the capital. They were accompanied for miles by crowds of weeping Madrileños, who saw in the Allied army’s withdrawal the ruin of all their hopes.

‘Yes, yes, all very sad, but it’s their own fault!’ Vandeleur said testily. ‘They’re a lazy, vain, improvident people! What can be done for them?’

It soon became evident that the retreat was going to be arduous. The rainy season had set in, and their long rest in Madrid had not done much to improve the condition of the troops. There was a good deal of sickness; everyone was wearing patched and threadbare clothing; and some of the regiments early showed that they were badly out of hand. The 4th division fell into trouble almost at once, and was obliged to return a list of three hundred missing. After a long, wet march, the Enthusiastics had indulged in an orgy of drinking, at Valdemoro, and no efforts of their officers could round up men quite incapable of marching. They had to be left behind, and the temper of the division was as frayed as its raiment. It poured with rain on the very first day of the march. Shooting-pains attacked General Vandeleur’s old wound; by the time his brigade arrived at Aravaca, to find every cottage in the village occupied by Hill’s headquarters Staff, he was in a real Irish temper. In he stalked, to the first decent dwelling-place he found, startling an officer who was toasting himself before a bright fire. ‘Who are you, sir?’ barked the General, shaking the raindrops from his cocked-hat.