Georgette Heyer - The Spanish Bride

‘Wait, that’s not all!’ said Kincaid. ‘You’ll be glad to know that the army has suffered no privation which but trifling attention on the part of the officers could not have prevented!’ ‘That’s one for the Commissary-General’s Staff,’ interrupted little Digby. ‘Quite true, too!’ ‘Not at all! It must be obvious to every officer that from the moment the troops commenced their retreat from the neighbourhood of Burgos on the one hand, and of Madrid on the other, the officers lost all control over their men,’

‘Ha!’ said Young Varmint. ‘Someone told him about the Enthusiastics getting drunk at Valdemero. Go on, Johnny! Any more tributes?’

‘Oh, the devil, this is too bad!’ George Simmons exclaimed, reading the Memorandum over Kincaid’s shoulder. ‘Just listen, you fellows!-I have frequently observed and lamented in the late campaign the facility and celerity with which the French cooked in comparison with our army.’

‘He has, has he?’ snorted Leach. ‘Well, if we could boil those damned kettles of ours on anything less than half a church door, we’d cook with facility and celerity too!’ ‘Wrong!’ said Kincaid. ‘The cause of this disadvantage is the same with that of every other-want of attention of the officers to the orders of the army and the conduct of the men. Now we know, don’t we?’

‘God, I think I’ll sell out!’ said Digby disgustedly.

‘My oath! I’m glad I’m not on the headquarters Staff!’ said James Stewart, taking the Memorandum out of Kincaid’s hand, and glancing through it. ‘I suppose the truth is that that pig-sticking affair annoyed him. He’s a bad-tempered devil.’

‘Daresay the lot he took to Burgos did misbehave themselves,’ said Leach. ‘That ought to be a lesson to him in future.’

‘What the hell does he mean by irregularities and outrages were committed with impunity?’ demanded Digby, in his turn seizing the document.

‘Horrid scenes at Torquemada,’ said Beckwith. ‘I heard about that.’ ‘Damn it, we had nothing to do with it!’

‘Much his precious lordship cares for that! Blast him, why should we worry? If he thinks he can find a finer set of fellows than our men, let him go and look for ’em! Who’s coming out after snipe?’

It would be a long time before the army could forgive its Commander for his sweeping condemnation, but meanwhile there was much to be done to make the various quarters habitable, and to ensure suitable recreation for the winter. Most of the cottages which were requisitioned for billets consisted of two rooms built on a mud-floor, the outer of which housed not only the owner of the property, but any livestock he might possess as well. Fires were kindled in the middle of the floors, and the smoke was allowed to drift towards a hole in the roof, so that the first task on being allotted quarters was to build a chimney. The second was to cover up broken windows, to keep out the cold; and the third to ride to Almeida in search of crockery, and all other domestic comforts. There were sutlers to be found in Frenada, but the prices charged at headquarters were beyond the means of most officers’ purses. Six shillings for a loaf of white bread was what you would have to pay, if you were green enough to do your shopping there; and twenty-two shillings for one pound of good tea; while long-forage for your horse would not cost you a penny less than four shillings for one small bundle.

The officers of the Light division, who were famous for their dramatic talent, lost no time in looking about them for a suitable playhouse. They found it in a disused chapel in Gallegos. They soon had it fitted up, and gave some excellent performances, which were attended by everyone, including Lord Wellington, who was quartered near enough to make a ride to Gallegos feasible. The Bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo, when he heard of it, laid a solemn curse on the enterprise, according to Kincaid, but nobody cared a penny for that. The rank-and-file, meanwhile, were settling down with that peculiar facility of the most insular people in the world to make themselves at home in any quarter of the globe. A great many of the camp-followers, widowed during the retreat, were finding new husbands. This was usual; indeed it was inevitable, since there were no means provided for their return to England. Generally, there was no lack of suitors for them, since a capable woman who could be relied upon to get into camp ahead of her man and have a strong hot cup of tea waiting for him, when he arrived cold and tired and hungry, made all the difference to a soldier’s comfort. Most of them could be relied on, too, in spite of anything the exasperated Provost Marshal could do. Even when he had their donkeys shot under them, in a vain attempt to discourage them from choking the line of march, they struggled on afoot, carrying their chattels on their backs, calling down curses on his head, and impeding the army’s progress just as much as ever. The stoutest-hearted amongst them could never be induced to travel in the rear. ‘Sure,’ said Mrs Skiddy, ‘if we went in the rear the French, bad luck to them, would pick me up, me and my donkey, and then Dan Skiddy would be lost entirely without me!’ Most of them had had three or four different husbands since they landed in Portugal, and although there were some men who thought the advantages of possessing a woman to sleep with one, and to cook for one, were outweighed by the certainty of having a dead man’s head thrown in one’s dish every time the creature was out of temper, there were usually half-a-dozen candidates for the widow’s hand by the time the first shovelful of earth had been thrown on top of her deceased mate. They were a rough set, always fighting, even more addicted to plunder than the soldiers themselves, and every bit as hardy.

Juana’s henchwoman was no exception to the rule, and several times presented herself at the Smiths’ billet with a scratched face, or a black eye; but Harry thought that her fighting qualities would be of more practical use to Juana than any of the accomplishments of a real lady’s maid.

The Smiths had made their winter-quarters so snug that the Padre decided to remain with them until the spring. After his adventure at San Munoz, it had seemed probable that he would leave them as soon as he could. He was for a time extremely disgruntled, and moralized a good deal over the selfishness of soldiers. ‘When you told me at Madrid what were the hardships of a soldier’s life in retreat, I considered I had a very correct idea,’ he told Harry. ‘I see now I had no conception whatever. Everyone acts for himself alone! There you see a poor, knocked-up soldier sitting in the mud, unable to move; there come grooms with led horses. No one asks the sick man to ride; no one sympathizes with the other’s feelings-in short, everyone appears to struggle against difficulties for himself alone.’ “On river-banks, Padre?’ Harry said, with a grin.

‘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.

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.