Georgette Heyer - The Spanish Bride

Juana was in Harry’s arms again by noon on the following day. Like the rest of the army, he was torn between jubilation and extreme irritation, this last being occasioned by the miscarriage of the pursuit of the broken French army through the night. The mob of fugitives crowding through the forest to the river should never have been allowed to get away, and indeed Marmont’s entire force must have been shattered beyond hope of re-forming had not the Spanish General, Carlos de Espana, taken it upon himself on the morning of the battle to withdraw the force he had been ordered to leave at Alba to guard the fords across the Tormes. He thought, of course, that he was doing quite the right thing, and when a tentative feeler, thrown out by him, disclosed the fact that Lord Wellington most decidedly desired the Spanish troops to remain at Alba, he had not cared to confess that they had already been withdrawn. It was one thing to act on one’s own initiative, but quite another, when it came to the point, to tell his lordship one had done so. In fact, it proved to be quite impossible, as anyone having the slightest knowledge of his lordship’s character must surely realize. So the French rout streamed across the Tonnes all through the night, without encountering any opposition; and the pursuing force, instead of finding them attempting the fords of Huerta, discovered that they had retreated by way of Alba de Tonnes instead. The Light division was continuing the pursuit, but Harry was not going with the brigade. Old Dr Burke had cursed him for a feckless madman, and had told him to take himself, and his boils, and his wife off to Salamanca, on sick-leave. This command having been endorsed by General Vandeleur, there was nothing for Harry to do but to hand over his duties to Brother Tom, dispatch his batman to disentangle his hounds and his portmanteau from the baggage-tram, snatch Juana up in his arms, singing out: ‘We’re going to have a honeymoon, alma mia de mi corazon,’ and ride off with her to Salamanca. That they had no money did not worry either of them. If the worst came to the worst, they could live on their rations. ‘A buen hambre no hay pan duro!’ said Juana gaily. Salamanca was crowded with sick and wounded, but the Smiths found themselves a billet in the house of a tenderhearted lady who mothered Juana, supplemented the surgeon’s treatment for Harry’s boils with remedies of her own, and eked out the army rations with coffee, and other such luxuries. Juana, detecting at the outset the maternal gleam in the lady’s eye, pandered to her shamelessly; accepted all the ointments and drenches she produced for Harry; and wheedled fresh eggs and pats of butter out of her by describing in the most harrowing style the awful privations of life in the British army. If that failed, a highly coloured account of her own adventures at Badajos could always be relied upon to conjure a few cakes or a freshly baked loaf out of the good lady. Harry swore that during the fortnight they spent in Salamanca Juana ruthlessly slew all her family in the siege of Badajos. ‘I never knew you had so many aunts and uncles and cousins!’ he declared. ‘Well, I haven’t,’ said Juana.

‘Oh, you little varmint, how can you say so? There was your uncle Tomas, who was shot by the French; and your uncle Juan, who died of starvation; and your heroic cousin, Maria, who flung herself on a soldier’s bayonet rather than lose her precious virginity-very difficult thing to do, that: she must have jumped out of the window on to the bayonet, I think; and your sainted aunt from the convent, who-’

‘Basta!’ said Juana. ‘You know very well I have no aunt in any convent, and as for my uncle Tomas, he died before I was born, and of course

you could throw yourself on a bayonet, if it was pointed at you, estupido!’ ‘Speaking for myself, I never point bayonets at girls I mean to rape,’ said Harry. ‘Pechero! malvado!’ Juana cried, pummelling him, but bubbling over with laughter. Harry grabbed at her wrists. ‘Peace, vixen! Now, speak the truth! Did you ever have a Cousin Maria, or an Uncle Juan?’

‘Yes, certainly I have both, but they live a long way from Badajos, and I do not think I shall ever see them again, so what does it matter if I tell a few little lies about them?’ ‘Little lies!’ scoffed Harry. ‘You’re an unprincipled female, hija.’ He let go her wrists, but held one of her hands lightly in his. ‘Tell me, mi pobrecita, do you miss them, that family of yours?”

‘Not very much,’ confessed Juana. ‘Only when I think that I have now no one but you, and then perhaps I do, a little.’

‘You don’t regret our marriage?’

‘Only when you are unkind to me, and unfaithful,’ said Juana mournfully. ‘You looked at the landlady’s niece in a very unfaithful way,’ said Juana, gloomily shaking her head.

‘I’ve a good mind to wring your neck!’

‘No, don’t. Tell me how we can buy a pair of socks, for that you must have.’ ‘I’ll be hanged if I know! I must see if I can borrow a crusado novo from someone.” ‘A crusado novo! It is not enough!”

‘It’s all I’m likely to get.’

The luck, however, was with him, for he fell in with General Cole’s ADO, who, upon hearing of the straits to which he was reduced, promptly lent him a dollar from the forty which had been doled out to him for the support of his General and his Staff. He thought that since Cole was in hospital, together with the other General-officers who had been wounded in the battle, he would scarcely miss it.

The possession of a whole dollar made the Smiths feel so wealthy that they at once discussed the most enjoyable ways of laying it out. These included such alternative entertainments as tickets for the theatre, or a dinner in the best part of the town; but no thought of replenishing their meagre wardrobes or their bare larder ever entered either of their heads. Juana did indeed, for conscience’s sake, insist on buying a pair of socks for Harry, but the rest of the money was spent in a way which George Simmons, Harry said, would undoubtedly condemn as frivolous.

They visited George’s young brother, Joseph, who was lying in hospital with a bad attack of fever. He was an engaging youth, who had enlisted as a volunteer, and for whom George was busy getting a commission in his own regiment, so that he could keep him under his eye, and attend to his education. ‘Only I don’t know but what I wouldn’t rather be with Maud,” confided the lad, referring to his other brother, a young gentleman of a very different kidney, who graced the 34th Foot, and was at present in Estremadura, under General Hill. ‘Except that I rather badly need some money,’ he added, ‘and one can depend on old George, though he does jaw a fellow so!’

‘We ought to have saved some of our money to give to poor Joe!’ Juana said remorsefully. But they had not saved any, so it was no use worrying about that. Harry said he thanked God he had never set out to be a model elder brother, because if ever he did as much for Tom as George did for Maud and Joe (and for the apparently unending line of younger brothers and sisters at home), ruin would stare him in the face.

They spent fourteen blissfully happy days in Salamanca, and left the city at the end of that time to join the army, which was marching on Madrid. Harry still had his boils, though they were not quite as painful as they had been, but he was not going to miss the army’s entry into Madrid for any consideration whatsoever. Did Juana feel that she could do some hard riding to catch up with the division? Of course she could! She desired above all things to see Madrid: adelante!

So off they went, dogs, horses, pack-mules, and groom, with not a penny to fly with, but in the best of spirits. The sun scorched them; the dust-laden wind rasped their skins and parched their throats; they had to sell Harry’s watch in Valladolid to provide themselves with ready money; but they overtook the division as it was about to cross the Sierra de Guadarrama, and were welcomed with open arms.

‘Harry, you old ruffian!’

‘Juana, my only love!’

‘Oh, how good it is to be back again!’ Juana cried, running from one to the other of her friends, and embracing them all impartially. ‘Johnny! Jack! Dear Charlie Beckwith! Oh, I am so happy to see you all!’

The Smiths had rejoined the division in time to share its first sight of the spires of Madrid, which were seen from the top of the Guadarrama Pass, rising out of the heat-haze far below.

There was a good deal of excitement at this first view of what had come to figure in most men’s minds as the Promised City. The soldiers broke from the ranks to run forward when the cry of: ‘Madrid! Madrid!’ was heard; and if there were those who thought that the plain of New Castile, which seemed to be such a long way below them, looked flat and singularly unattractive, there were many more who, though extremely footsore, felt themselves filled with renewed energy at the dim view of the capital’s spires.

The Light division camped that night in the park of the Escurial, and while the more serious-minded persons went off to look at the palace, others engaged in an impromptu boar-hunt. In the end, they had the best of it, for the palace was discovered to be an unbeautiful edifice, wholly stripped of the pictures and statues which had once adorned it. When the weary columns, plodding across the interminable plain, came within five miles of Madrid, they encountered the vanguard of a host of Madrileños, who were streaming out of the city to welcome them. From then onward, the march became a triumphal procession, and the thirst the soldiers were suffering from was quenched with wine, grapes, lemonade, all of which were pressed upon them by an excited populace, who hailed them as deliverers, and even flung down palms on the causeway for them to tread on. The road was choked with civilians, women as well as men, and no one seemed to have come empty-handed. The grinning soldiers had sweetmeats popped into their mouths by pretty girls, or sprigs of laurel stuck in their shakos; and several persons of consequence had actually hired porters to carry wine-jars out for the refreshment of ‘the troops.

‘Oh, by God!’ laughed Harry, catching a rose tossed to him. ‘We shall take the whole division into Madrid as drunk as wheelbarrows!’

‘It’s all very well, you fellows, but it’s very embarrassing, upon my word it is!’ said George Simmons, mopping his heated face. ’Two of those girls pretty nearly pulled me out of the saddle just now!’

“They wanted to kiss you!’ Harry told him.

‘Well, I know that, but it’s not seemly. Besides, one doesn’t want to be kissed by such forward hussies!’

‘Who doesn’t?’ demanded Beckwith. ‘Where are they? Why doesn’t someone pull me out of my saddle?’

‘Charlie, now do be serious! Really, I am astonished! I thought Spanish ladies were so strictly reared, but just look at them! For they are ladies, quite a number of them. You can tell by their mantillas.’

The scene outside the mud walls of the city was as nothing, however, to the welcome which was being prepared for the troops within them. Lord Wellington rode in at the head of the army, and several of the regimental bands, catching the spirit of the populace, struck up See the Conquering Hero Comes. Compared with the wild enthusiasm of the Madrileños, the entry into Salamanca two months before was a colourless affair. Not Talavera, not Bussaco, had been victories in any way approaching the magnitude of Salamanca. Never before had the French had to evacuate the capital, but this time not only had Marmont’s force suffered a crushing defeat, but King Joseph had had to withdraw from Madrid in a belated attempt to bring reinforcements to his lieutenant, leaving only a garrison in the fort of the Retiro. The Madrileños, therefore, greeted Lord Wellington as their liberator, and a very awkward time he had of it, forcing his slow way through the decorated streets to his headquarters. Shawls, veils, and flowers were strewn on the cobbles for his horse to tread on; rose-petals showered down on him from every balcony; women clung to his stirrups, and actually kissed his knees; and on more than one occasion he was nearly unseated. Behind him his devoted troops marched in, dusty, shabby some of them, and all of them footsore, but every one on the broad grin, and a great many of them with laughing beauties already attached to them. ‘As good as ever went endways!’ That was the opinion the British soldiers held of Spanish women.

The army was quartered in and around Madrid, the Light division being placed at Getafe, a small town situated a few miles south of the city, on a rather dreary plateau. The Smiths found a comfortable billet there, but they, like everyone else, spent all their leisure hours in Madrid. Harry had managed to get some of the pay which was owing to him, and nothing would do for him but to deck Juana in the finest raiment his purse could afford. Strolling with her on his arm along the Prado, in the cool of the evening, he declared that not one of the fair Castilians Madrid had to show could compare with his little Estremenha. As for Juana, she was so much enchanted by Madrid that it remained for ever in her mind the touchstone by which she judged all other cities.