The Spanish Bride

8

Juana, who had taken up temporary quarters in a posada in the centre of the village, was joined there presently by a lady who came into the yard with a soldier-servant, and desired the landlord to bring her a glass of lemonade. After looking at Juana for a few moments, she went over to her, and asked if she too had a husband in the army. She was a good many years older than Juana, an Englishwoman with a deeply tanned and weather-beaten skin, and careworn lines at the corners of her eyes.

West, who had just come out of the shed where he had tethered the horses, touched his hat, and explained that his mistress spoke no English. The lady repeated her question in Spanish, and when Juana answered, Yes, she was married to an English officer, she said wonderingly: ‘I had not thought it possible! You are so young, my dear.’ ‘Oh no!’ Juana assured her. ‘I shall very soon be fifteen. I have been married since three months already.’

The lady smiled. ‘My dear! And your husband? What is his regiment?’ ‘He is a Rifleman,’ said Juana. ‘Also he is a Brigade-Major, which is a position of great responsibility, you understand.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ agreed the lady, a twinkle in her eyes. ‘Do you know, I think I have heard of you? Were you not married after Badajos?’

‘Yes, I am Mrs Harry Smith,’ said Juana. ‘And you, señora?’

‘I am Mrs Dalbiac. My husband is Colonel of the 4th dragoons. These are very anxious times for us poor wives, are they not?’

‘Yes, but also they are very exciting,’ Juana pointed out.

‘Ah, when you have followed the army for as long as I have, you will not care for the excitement!’ sighed Mrs Dalbiac.

Juana did not think this was very probable, but being too polite to say so, she asked Mrs Dalbiac instead if she would like to see her horse, Tiny. Mrs Dalbiac seemed to think that Tiny was rather a mettlesome mount for a lady, but Juana explained how stupid the Portuguese horse had been in crossing the river, and how frightened he was of the storm, and Mrs Dalbiac said, but with that look of wonder in her eye, that certainly nothing could be worse than a cowardly horse. She asked Juana questions about her family, and seemed greatly moved by Juana’s graphic account of the circumstances leading up to her marriage. She shuddered at the description of the sack of Badajos, and evidently pitied Juana very much for being an orphan, and having lost all means of getting into touch with her sister. Juana, although she was not above drawing, in moments of stress, the most heartrending picture of her orphaned condition, for Harry’s benefit, was not really in the least concerned with her sister’s disappearance from her life, and found this conversation rather tedious. However, Mrs Dalbiac, having drunk her lemonade, went away presently to rejoin her husband, promising to return in a little while.

The distant noise of gun-fire, now that Juana had leisure to notice it, seemed to have considerably increased. She judged, from the position of the sun, that the afternoon was already fairly advanced. There did not seem to be anything much to do, and she Was beginning to be a little bored, when the blare of trumpets sounding the advance whipped up her waning interest. West came running into the yard to tell heir that the cavalry had been ordered up, and that the news was flying round that Pakenham, supported by D’Urban’s Portuguese cavalry brigade, had brought the Fighting division beautifully up the hill, away to the right, and had fallen upon the leading column of Thomieres’ division with such impetuous fury that Thomieres’ entire column, caught all unawares, was nearly annihilated. Staff-officers, sent to order up the cavalry reserve, told of the utmost confusion in the French van. Half Thomieres’ force had fallen, an Eagle had been captured, and the victorious Fighting division was even now continuing its charge along the plateau towards the centre of the line. The ground, one officer said, was covered with dead and wounded, and the broken remnants of the French column were flying before the Allied advance. Nothing more superb than this charge had ever been seen, and now let who dared say that Lord Wellington’s genius lay solely in defence!

Juana was naturally very much excited by this news, and ran out to see the cavalry move off. They looked so splendid that she had to clap her hands, and wave to them. After they had gone, and the clatter and jingle had dwindled to a distant thud, and then faded quite away, the village seemed very quiet and deserted. Even West began to be rather restive, for although the Light division was still being held in reserve, there was no knowing when it would be called into action, and Harry perhaps have need of the spare horse he was leading. After a short period of indecision, he yielded to Juana’s entreaties to move a little nearer to the front, and went off to bring out the horses.

As they rode towards the rear of the Light division, the noise of the battle grew steadily louder. The nature of the ground prevented their seeing anything of the encounter on the plateau, but the din was appalling: worse, Juana thought, than the horrid noise made on the night of Badajos. A groom, leading up a remount, said that Leith’s and Cole’s divisions had come into action at five o’clock, and that their encounter with the French centre was a bloody business, in the course of which Leith had been so badly wounded that he had been obliged to leave the field. But Le Marchant’s brigade of dragoons, coming up the hill, passed in the interval between Leith’s and Pakenham’s divisions, and reached the crest of the plateau just as Maucune was beginning to fall back, A most impressive sight that seemed to have been: a thousand sabres advancing in two lines, and charging down at the gallop upon Maucune’s flank. Right through the French column they crashed, and on, led by Le Marchant himself, fighting like any trooper, until they met the leading regiment of Brennier’s supporting division. They lost their formation, of course, and there were scores of empty saddles, but no infantry, taken thus by surprise, could hope to stand against their charge. But the pity of it was that Le Marchant had fallen, and there was no getting the brigade into order again. ‘Racing one against t’other to be the first in amongst the Frenchies, that’s what it looked like,’ the groom told West. ‘Clean crazy, sabring right and left, and the whole ground fair covered with dead! I never saw anything to equal it! One minute the French was there, all drawn up in battle-order, thousands of ’em!-and the next, by God, if they wasn’t scattered all over the place, and them dragoons sweeping up the remains!’

He was unable to give West any news of the Light division, his master being in Clinton’s division, but he thought they had not been engaged. There was a very sanguinary affair going on by the Southern Arapile, that rocky knoll in advance of the Allied line. Pack’s Portuguese had been trying to gain possession of it, but there was no scaling it under the withering fire of the French on the summit.

By the time Juana and West arrived at their objective, which was some way behind the Light division, amongst the ammunition-carts, the remounts, the doctors, and all other persons belonging to the division who had no immediate business in the front line, a rumour that Marmont had been killed was quickly spreading. This seemed too good to be true, but amongst the French losses, which were enormous, anything, it was thought hopefully, was possible.

The incessant and sometimes deafening gun-fire, the sight of wounded men making their way to the rear, and the various tales she heard of the fierce nature of the battle, awoke all Juana’s fears again, and it was not until she found herself beside old Dr Burke, in the rear of the Light division, and was assured by him of the division’s complete inaction, that her mind could be at all at rest. She hoped for a sight of Harry, but almost immediately after her arrival the division was ordered to advance in pursuit of the retreating army.

The French retreat to the Tonnes, covered by Percy’s and Foy’s unbroken troops, closely resembled a rout. Hundreds of soldiers were escaping into the protection of the thick woods on the southern side of the plateau; the plateau itself was strewn with dead men and horses; smoke still hung heavily where the artillery-fire had been hottest; and a litter of discarded accoutrements gave an air of confusion to the whole scene.

Juana heard someone on the Quartermaster-General’s Staff say that the remnant of the French army, which was making for the fords across the river, would be caught by the Spanish troops left at Alba.

The sun was sinking, and the chill night wind made Juana glad of her big cloak. West pitched her little tent on the battlefield, in the middle of some green wheat. He cut sheaves of it to make a bed for her, since he thought there was little chance of her being able to rejoin the brigade that night. He had a pair of lanterns with him, and by the light of these Juana ate a supper of sandwiches, washed down with some of the wine of Rueda. When she lay down presently on her bed of wheat, she had to hold her horse. The moon rose and lit the field with a cold silver light, but it could no more prevent Juana’s dropping asleep than the confused noises of the army bivouacking for the night, or the crackle and glow of the camp-fires. She had spent an exhausting day; she was not yet fifteen; and not even the thought of Mrs Dalbiac, whom she had seen again, riding towards the scene of Le Marchant’s magnificent charge, and looking strangely haggard, had the power to keep her awake. Mrs Dalbiac had seemed scarcely to recognize her; she had said over and over again: ‘I must find my husband. You must let me find my husband!’ All Juana’s warm young heart had gone out to her; she could picture herself in just such distress, searching for Harry’s body amongst the slain; but there was nothing she could do to help Mrs Dalbiac; and meanwhile Harry was safe, and West was unwrapping some thick sandwiches, and she was very hungry. The bed of wheat, though it scratched her cheek a little, was wonderfully comfortable. She curled herself up with Harry’s boat-cloak spread over her, and dropped into a deep dreamless sleep, which lasted until a persistent tugging at the wheat roused her. She opened drowsy eyes upon a moon like a silver plate, and found Tiny’s soft muzzle close to her ear. Another tug made her realize what was happening. She sat up, waking West by breaking into peals of laughter. ‘Oh, oh, Tiny has eaten all my lovely bed!’