Georgette Heyer - The Spanish Bride

‘If only we had carried it!’ Harry said, casting a fierce, hungry look upwards at the breach. ‘Never mind, they’re all saying it was our attacks that made it possible for Leith’s and Picton’s fellows to break in. And Johnny’s safe too, and dear old Charlie Beckwith! Oh, but Harry, though there’s no denying we are The Division, it makes one’s heart swell, indeed it does, to think of those noble fellows of Picton’s scaling the Castle-hill as they did! And the Pioneers, too, winning the river-bastion, with everyone ready to swear they must fail!’ ‘Yes!’ Harry said, kindling with ready enthusiasm. ‘Noble fellows, all of them, and the bloodiest, most glorious action, George! By God, I would fight every one of our battles again, but not this one!’

‘Oh, no, not this one again!’ George agreed, with a shudder.

‘I hate sieges!’ Harry said, viciously jerking the knot of his sash. ‘The men behave like heroes, brave, drunken blackguards that they are! and then they go straight to the devil, as they’re doing now!’

‘Very true,’ George said. ‘It is melancholy, and upon more counts than one.’ ‘It plays the dickens with the brigade!’ snapped Harry.

When the living had been disentangled from the dead, and carried to the camp; and fatigue-parties of Portuguese had begun to dig great pits to receive the hundreds of the slain, there was nothing for even the keenest duty-officer to do but to visit wounded friends, or kick his heels in camp until it should please his men to reel out of Badajos, sick, probably, from excess of wine; richer, certainly, by the value of the goods they had plundered; sullen, some of them, from the knowledge of beastliness committed while they were mad with battle-fury and the wicked magic of unlimited liquor; elated, others, and bragging of unspeakable deeds; demoralized, all of them: heartrending objects to officers whose business was their welfare, and whose pride their efficiency; and who cared for them, in a queer, rough way, even when they cursed them for a set of black-hearted, gutter-born scoundrels. It would take time to shoot, and flog, and bully the divisions into shape again; and the best men were dead, and their bodies heaved one on top of the other into deep, stinking pits. New draughts would arrive presently from England: regular Johnny Raws, landing at Lisbon, and working their way goggle-eyed through Portugal to join the army, under a subaltern as raw as themselves, who would thus early in his career be given a painful chance to prove his worth. If there was stuff in him, he would get his draught to its destination intact, with most of its baggage, and without leaving a trail of pillaged farmsteads in its wake; if he lacked confidence in himself, or was found to have a strain of weakness in him, he would bring only the more tractable of his men to the division, and have a shameful tale to tell his Colonel of desertions on the road.

‘And if we get all the new draughts it will take months licking them into shape!’ said Harry, fretting at forced inaction, and so in a brittle temper, snapping at every ill. ‘And the old hands sunk to the level of gutter-sweepings after this filthy, bloody, damnable sack!’ ‘Don’t be downhearted, Harry: we shall be on the march again before the week’s out, if all I hear is true,’ said Kincaid, who had lounged over to Harry’s tent to talk over the assault with him. ‘Nothing like a few hard marches to pull the men together. You should look on the lighter side of things.’

Harry acknowledged the bantering note with one of his quick smiles, but shook his head. ‘Damned little lighter side to this affair!’

‘Oh, isn’t there, by God! You should have been with me in the small hours, when I was posting the pickets in the streets. A man of ours brought a prisoner up to me. Said he was the Governor, and plainly thought he would get a big reward for taking him.’ ‘I thought Phillipon escaped to the San Cristobal?”

‘He may have, for anything I know. A very fine fellow-by Jove, he was a fine fellow, too! quite the dandy, and with enough gold lace for a hussar!-well, he made no bones about admitting to me that he wasn’t the Governor, but had told poor Allen he was to ensure protection. He told me he was the Colonel of one of the regiments-I forget which-and that all his surviving officers were waiting in his quarters hard-by, to surrender themselves to any English officer who would be so obliging as to go to them. Ah well! I’m a Scot myself, but I went.’

‘Ambush!’ said Harry, his eyes beginning to dance.

‘Devil a bit! I took two or three men with me, and there, sure enough, were these precious French officers-fifteen or more of ’em-all assembled in the Colonel’s quarters, and not one of ’em able to understand why the town was lost, or how the devil I got in. I didn’t chose to tell ’em that. I said I’d entered at the breach, which was true enough; though how we any of us got in, when you consider the way the Johnny Crapauds hurled us back like so many recruits, was a thing that was puzzling me as much as it was puzzling them. I never saw a set of fellows so dejected! All except the Major, a big, jolly-looking Dutchman, with medals enough on his breast to have furnished the window of a tolerable toy-shop. He was a good fellow: cracked as many jokes as corks out of wine-bottles. Damme if I remember the jokes, but the wine was excellent.’

‘You villain, Johnny, do you tell me you stood there and drank with them?’ Harry demanded. ‘Stood! We sat round the table, to a dish of cold meat, and drank each others’ healths! After supper, off went my Colonel to secure his valuables. He was so grateful to me for allowing it that he told me he had a couple of good horses in the stable, which, as he wouldn’t be permitted to keep ’em, he recommended me to take. So, as a horse is the only prize we poor devils of officers can consider strictly legal, I had one of ’em saddled. And a handsome black beauty she is, my boy. Three hundred guineas at Tatt’s: not a penny less!’ Harry, always on the look-out for a good horse, was loudly envious of so much good-fortune, and proposed that he should instantly go with Kincaid to his quarters to inspect the animal. They were on the point of strolling off together when Kincaid saw two ladies coming towards them from the direction of the city. ‘Hallo, what’s this?’ he said, detaining Harry. Harry bestowed no more than a cursory glance on the approaching women. ‘What should it be but a couple of camp-followers? Come on, man! You don’t need a woman today!’ ‘No, but wait!’ Kincaid said. ‘They’re ladies. Look at their mantillas!’

By this time the two veiled figures, the smaller and slighter of the pair supported by the arm of the other, had come within earshot. Harry, a little impatient, favoured them with another look, more searching this time. He decided that Kincaid was right. Ladies they were, if quiet elegance of dress was anything to go by. He stood still, waiting beside Kincaid to see what they could want in the British camp.

The taller woman led her shrinking companion straight up to the two officers, and put back her mantilla with one thin hand. A handsome, careworn face was disclosed. The lady was no longer in the first blush of youth, but her features were fine, her eyes dark and liquid, and her bearing that of a princess. She addressed the two officers in Spanish, speaking in a voice that retained its natural dignity in spite of evident agitation. ‘Señors, you are English. I implore your aid!’

‘Anything in our power, señora!’ Kincaid replied promptly. A look of relief spread over the strained face. ‘You speak Spanish!’ ‘Tolerably well, señora, but not as well as my friend here, I believe.’ The lady’s eyes turned towards Harry, slight and wiry, and a little fidgety beside his tall friend. He bowed, but he knew that there was nothing any officer could do to help a Spaniard from Badajos, and wished that Kincaid would make an end.

The lady seemed to feel his impatience, and addressed herself again to Kincaid. ‘Señor, you must wonder at my coming into your camp thus unattended. I am of the family of Los Dolores de León. If you doubt me, let me but be brought to Colonel Campbell, or Lord Fitzroy Somerset, for they know me well!’

Her tongue tripped a little over the names, but Kincaid nodded his understanding. She continued anxiously: ‘We are of the true hidalgo blood, señor. Lord Fitzroy would know. After the battle of Talavera, he and Colonel Campbell were billeted in my house. You recall?’ ‘Yes, I recall. We made Badajos our General Headquarters.’

‘It is so. I know well Lord Wellington. But then, alas, we were of consequence, señor! rich, respected! All that is gone. This war! You understand, it was from the olive groves that we had our fortune. But the accursed French have ravaged all, all!’

Her eyes flashed, her bosom heaved. Kincaid intervened, saying, with a questioning lift of his brows at Harry: ‘Yes, indeed I understand! But you must not stand here, señora. Will you not come into the tent? Harry, you’ve got two chairs!’

The lady murmured her thanks; Brigade-Major Smith, casting an extremely speaking glance upon his friend, did the honours of his tent, setting two camp-chairs for his unwanted guests. The smaller figure, who had not yet put back the mantilla from her face, seemed to be half-unconscious, for she hung heavily on her companion’s arm, and when put gently into her chair, sank down as though exhausted, and gave no other sign of life than the shudders which from time to time shook her frame. These convulsive rigors had the effect of riveting Harry’s attention upon her. His keen eyes were unable to pierce the veil that hid her face from him, but he saw that her hands, which were tightly clasped in her lap, were small and smooth, the hands of a young girl. He could fancy that from behind the mantilla her eyes, perhaps as large and as fine as her companion’s, were watching him. His interest was aroused; he waited for her to put back her veil, attending only with, half an ear to what the elder lady was telling Kincaid.

The lady’s agitation made her lose some of the calm which seemed, from her periodic attempts to recapture it, almost a part of her nature. She recounted her story disjointedly, dwelling upon irrelevancies, and several times assuring Kincaid that she was nobly born, and that such an excursion as this, into the English camp, could never have been undertaken by her except under the stress of direst need.

She was married, she said to a Spanish officer, fighting in a distant part of the kingdom, but whether he lived, or was dead; she knew not. Until yesterday, she and her young sister were living in quiet and affluence in one of the best houses in Badajos. A gesture indicated the figure at her side.

‘Today, señor, we know not where to lay our heads, where to get a change of raiment, or even a morsel of food! My house is a wreck, all our furniture broken or carried off, ourselves exposed to insult and brutality-ah, if you do not believe me, look at my ears, how they are torn by those wretches wrenching the rings out of them!’

She pointed to her neck, which was blood-stained. Kincaid spoke soothingly to her; his easy sympathy had the effect of calming her. She pressed her handkerchief to her lips, and tried to speak more quietly. ‘For myself, I care not! I have friends who will assist me to go to my husband. I am no longer young; I do not fear! But for this child, this poor little sister who has but just come to me from the convent where she has been educated, I am in despair, and know not what to do! Señor, do you know, have you seen the ruin that is desolating the city? There is no security there, there is only rapine and slaughter! I cannot take her with me, perhaps into worse danger! There was only one thing that I could do. Indelicate it must seem to you, yet oh, señor, in your national character I have such faith that I believe my appeal will not be made in vain, nor my confidence abused! We have come to throw ourselves upon the protection of any English officer whose generosity will afford it us!’

‘Señora, upon my word of honour as a gentleman, you have nothing to fear in this camp,’ Kincaid said. ‘Every protection-’

She brushed his words aside, as though impatient of them. ‘I need nothing. There are those who will assist me to find my husband. It is for my sister, who is so young, that I implore your kindness!’

She had been clasping the girl in her arms as she spoke, but she released her now, and murmuring some fondness, put back the mantilla from her face.

The sweetest little face Kincaid had ever seen was thus revealed. It was woefully pale, and of a fairness of skin more English than Spanish. The eyes, under rather strongly marked brows, were large, dilated a little with lingering terror, but of a soft brilliance which dazzled Kincaid into thinking that he beheld a beauty. But she was not strictly beautiful. Her little nose was not classic; her mouth was too large, and with a full underlip rather firmly supporting the upper, in a way which gave a great deal of character to the face, and some impression of stubbornness. This was borne out by a decided chin, rounded, to be sure, but no weakling’s chin, as Kincaid saw at a glance.