After the exhaustion and bitter confusion of her wedding day, Thea awoke the next morning after far too little sleep with her hair matted and great dark circles under her eyes. She made a few motions at tidying herself before she pulled her shawl down firmly over her fair hair and went out to meet Matlin in the yard. “Very convincing,” he murmured to her. “You look the complete peasant woman.” Then he began to abuse her loudly in rough Spanish for a lazy, good-for-nothing wife, and Thea forced herself to remember the parts they were playing. Later, as they passed women who walked or rode paces behind their men, or listened to submissive murmurs, “Si, mi esposo,” Thea remembered, and added their mannerisms to her own part.
They stopped each night in grimy, crowded posadas much like the first, where for a few coins they had a place to sleep, and where the food they had brought with them would be cooked in the same greasy pan which moments earlier had held the landlord’s dinner or a farmer’s sausage. Thea would then stumble off, dizzy with exhaustion, to the women’s bedding, usually no more than one huge straw pallet on which all female visitors slept, while Matlin stayed behind, listening to the men talk. In the women’s room there was always gossip, and somehow Thea always was brought to admit that she was newly wed; after that there was coarse, well-meant raillery to be endured, all the more uncomfortable for her in her odd halfway state, wife but no wife. A question plagued her even after her bedmates had dropped off to sleep: what is wrong with me?
On the fifth day of traveling they stopped under a scruffy tree at a roadside to eat. During these informal meals Matlin would relax a bit, talk with her, even amuse her with stories as he had done on the afternoon of their wedding day. “So far all I have had to do is answer simple questions and listen,” he admitted ruefully and in English. “I go in terror that sooner or later I will have to make a full declarative sentence without grunts or shaking my head, and then our game will truly be up. God, but I’ll be glad to see England again.”
“So will I,” Thea agreed. “My hair is nearly brown with all this dirt, and I hate to think what Silvy would say about my complexion.”
“As to your hair, the browner the better for the nonce, I should say. A blonde is too easily remarkable, and that is simply dangerous. As for your complexion—well, you look healthy, except for those circles under your eyes. Don’t you sleep well, child?”
How can I, she wanted to ask, throwing his solicitous tone in his teeth. He appeared to find nothing odd in their marriage, in the pretense in their relations. “I’m all right,” she said at last. Something in her voice must have disturbed Matlin; he applied himself more heartily to his bread and cheese.
“I calculate that we have about a hundred fifty miles to go to Oporto. From there, I should be able to locate a privateer or man-of-war lying offshore, and we’ll have the last leg of our journey, at least, in some comfort, child.”
I am not a child, she thought furiously. “We have a way to go today, then,” was what she said.
“We’ve made a good start, in any case.” He rose to pack away the waterskin and remains of their meal. As he reached his feet Matlin’s face went white for a moment and he swayed, clutching the lead rein of one of the mules to steady himself. Then he smiled unconvincingly at Thea. “Clumsy brute.”
She would not be so easily fobbed off. “Is it your head that hurts you? Matlin, let me see. Are you still dizzy?”
He waved off her attention irritably. “It was only for a moment, for God’s sake. The sun—the heat—No!” he spat as she stood on her toes to reach up and sweep aside the dark hair that covered his scar. It looked well enough, long, ragged, but with pink healthy tissue under the grime that covered most of his face. “For God’s sake, girl, I’m all right.” Brusquely he pushed her aside.
“Lo siento, seguro, “ Thea snapped, as angry as he, and clambered onto her mule without his help.
They rode silently for the rest of the afternoon, each regretting the outburst. It was nearly sundown when they approached a largish village which seemed unusually busy, even for this post-siesta time of day. “You rest here,” Matlin instructed curtly. “I want to see what’s happening in the town. If anyone comes, you’re waiting for your man; his name is, uh, Miguel.”
“Si, Miguel, grácias. “ She watched him tie his mule up with hers, and she stared at the dark, travel-stained back of his jacket until he was out of sight. Then, because there was little to keep her from thinking of herself and her husband, Thea settled herself up against a rock and began to sing one of Sister Ana’s old songs. Gradually the late heat of the day and fatigue made her drowsy, and she slipped into a light doze.
When she wakened it took a moment for her to recall where she was and how long she had been waiting there. Matlin was long overdue; the light was very nearly gone. He said to wait, but she was certain that something had happened. His Spanish was so chancy and—she admitted to herself—that dizzy spell of his had frightened her badly.
Standing stiffly, Thea unlashed the mules from the tree where they were patiently cropping low branches. She pulled her shawl down again over her filthy, betraying hair and started off in the direction Matlin had taken. As she walked she could hear the sound of voices, men’s voices singing boisterously in French. A frisson ran down her spine; they were in the village, right enough, and from the few words she could make out from this distance she surmised that most of them were very drunk. “Dear God, don’t let him have been taken,” she whispered. Then, remembering to drop her shoulders in the self-effacing imitation of a peasant wife, she started down the hill into the village proper.
She wondered if she dared to ask for him directly. “Have you seen my husband, a young man so tall, in a blue jacket and black trousers....” Surely there must be some way to describe him without drawing suspicion. Then, with the memory of Matlin’s sudden, frightening dizziness as her inspiration, Thea had her plan, just in time to try her story on two approaching foot soldiers. They were very drunk and looked at her owlishly when she began her distracted wailing.
“Sirs, please, Señores, have you seen my husband, my Miguel?” A touch of the shrew, a touch of Silvy’s worried tone, the edgy humility of the wife of Manuel in the convent village. “Please, sirs, have you seen him? This tall, with a blue jacket that my mother made, God rest her soul....” She crossed herself and rattled on in Spanish, watching them as carefully as she dared. They were amused by her; that was easily seen, but she suspected they understood very little of what she said.
“Sposo? Sposo?” One of them echoed her. Then, in French, “Come here, darling, give us a kiss.”
Panicked, Thea drew back. It had never occurred to her that anyone would accost her. Again, invoking the Virgin and all the saints she could recall, she begged for news of her husband. “Since the mule kicked him, Señores, Miguel has been, you know? A little funny in the head. Says things no one can understand....” That, in case Matlin had been captured and made some sort of slip into English. She prayed, in that case, that none of the soldiers understood English.
Neither of the men were interested in Miguel, but the nearer of them reached an arm out for Thea and pawed her shoulder heavily. She struggled backward with a stifled shriek, frightened in earnest now.
“What’s the noise? Paul, Edouard? What’s she bawling about?” From a brightly lit doorway a fat uniformed figure lumbered toward them. “¿Que es el problema?” he asked laboriously. With a sigh Thea began her tale again, of Miguel and his poor, mule-addled wits.
“He told me to mind the mules, Señor, then—nothing! Me, I am a good wife; I do what I am told, but he has been gone so long, I was afraid. Señor, when his head hurts he becomes so strange, for the love of God and all the saints in heaven, have you seen him, please?”
“A crazy man, you say? In a blue jacket? Edouard, what of the fool that fell down at Emile’s feet. He wore a blue jacket, didn’t he?”
While Thea struggled to hide her impatience the sergeant and his two drunken men debated whether or not the imbecile they had taken in for questioning could be the man she sought.
At last, “Señora, best you come with me and see, eh?” The sergeant put a meaty arm out to her in a gesture of courtliness; he reeked of garlic and sweat, and Thea was glad to have the distance of the mules between them as they went. She kept up her stream of distracted chatter and fretted over what would happen to her if she lost her man. “A good husband until the accident, I swear, and even now when the pain is not bad.” They went round the side of the posada, from which raucous singing still issued, and back to a tiny shack illuminated by a single tin lantern.
“Well, Señora? Is this your husband?” The sergeant leaned unnecessarily close to push the door open for her, and there, sullenly crouched into a corner on a pile of straw, was Matlin. Quickly, so as to give him no time to slip and destroy her beautiful fiction, Thea rushed into the room, babbling her thanks to the sergeant, to Providence, and to the entirety of the occupying forces which had taken pity on her addlewitted spouse. Then, dropping to her knees before him, hoping that she would block any sign of astonishment on his face from the sergeant’s sight, she began to alternate apology with wifely abuse. “Don’t you know me? Miguel, I was so worried! You go wandering and getting into trouble, and now we shall never reach my uncle’s house, and the wedding is tomorrow....”
Turning again to begin her litany of thanks to the sergeant, Thea saw him exchange a look with Matlin that plainly said “Women!” Then, with a courtliness which belied his girth, he bowed to her. “Perhaps the Señora will take a cup of wine with me?” Thea felt Matlin stiffen at her side. She rose, tugging her shawl down and tight about her head, and bobbed a rustic curtsy. “Thank you, oh a thousand times, Señor, but Miguel and I are promised for my cousin’s wedding, and now he has made us late with his poor head and....” Looking up into the man’s moon-shaped face and willing him to believe her, Thea did not see his large arm reaching for her waist.
“Come, Señora, a little kiss for a soldier of the Empire,” he wheedled.
Thinking quickly, Thea twisted away with something between a laugh and a cry of outrage. “Sergeant, I am a good wife! If I were a young girl again...” she managed, back safely by Matlin’s side, to imply that alone she would have been his for the asking. The assurance was enough, it seemed. With another creaking bow the sergeant closed the door and left Thea alone with Matlin.
They looked at each other for a long moment, paralyzed. “Are you all right?” Thea asked at last, low and in English. “They said you’d fallen at someone’s feet.”
“Tripped, more likely. My Spanish began to fail me and, thank God, they seemed ready to believe the same fable you so capably spread about: that I was an imbecile of some sort.” His smile was white in the dim light. “You’re a valuable companion, child; my congratulations.” Thea tried to pull away, bristling, but his arm was around her. “We’d best get clear of this town before your suitor decides to try his luck with you again. Bastard,” he added viciously, under his breath.
Leading the mules between them they left the town in silence and listened for sounds of other soldiers, ready to fall into their roles again if necessary. Not until they had put a good two miles between the encampment and themselves did Matlin let them stop, and they made camp a short way from the road, under a circle of fir trees.
“Do we dare have a fire?” Thea asked when he had handed her the hamper which held their dwindling supply of food.
“Can you manage without? I don’t think it will be very cold tonight.”
Thea only nodded and busied herself in tearing apart the stale loaf. It was a grim enough meal: cold, stale water, crumbling bread, crumbs of cheese left from the generous piece the Sisters had given them. For the first time Thea thought kindly of her small cell at the convent. When the food was gone and she had not even the entertainment of a fire, when she was worn out with worry, play-acting, and Matlin’s strained silence, there was nothing for Thea to do but pull her shawl about her shoulders and curl up miserably against one of the trees. A few feet away Matlin sat, absorbed by his thoughts; he was staring at nothing. Just before she drifted into exhausted sleep Thea opened her eyes to look at him and heard again the French footsoldier’s words, esposo? esposo? A question indeed.
o0o
Matlin was aware of Thea’s misery but not sure of its origin, and as there was nothing he could do for her, certainly nothing he could do that would not increase his own sense of shame at the sorrowful figure he had cut that day, he said nothing, did nothing. It had not occurred to him. He thought of her as such a child still that he had never imagined she could be offered the sort of insult she had met with that day. She had handled it; she had let him know with a quick pressure of her hand against his side that she must be the one to answer the sergeant’s advances. That she had been correct made no difference. What treatment had she met before she found him in the hut? The joke of it, a child barely in her teens handling those damned brutes of soldiers while he sat there struggling to keep his mouth shut.
Another part of his mind willingly acknowledged that in the skirt and fitted jacket of a peasant woman the girl looked older, old enough to be a wife in earnest, if one knew no better. He thought of Thea as she had hurled herself into the hut that evening and of the very different image of the pretty child in those ridiculous nun’s robes, the child playing with kittens outside his window. It was difficult to believe they could be the same woman. Girl, he corrected himself. Child, but a brave, game child nonetheless. There was no doubt he had been right to help her away from the convent; she deserved her chance to play the young lady, to fall in love with some bright, unspoilt boy who would make a faithful husband to her in good earnest. It was curiously disturbing, that vision.
Shaking himself from these thoughts, Matlin rose and checked the mules’ tethers. Then, bowing to a foolish whim, he went to where Thea slept curled tightly up, shivering in her sleep. I might have built her a fire, he thought regretfully. No, not tonight, too risky. She understood that, he hoped. God knew she had had enough to understand on this journey. Thoughtfully he watched her for a moment and then removed his coat, draped it over her, and went to sit against another tree and to try for sleep himself.
“How far have we come?” she asked the next morning. Talking idly in Spanish, in the full glare of the day, both felt easier.
“If that town was Peñausende last night, then we’ve a journey of about a day and a half to reach the border.”
“Portugal. If we can cross the border in peace,” Thea added. Matlin looked at her sharply; he had been thinking much the same thing himself but had decided not to alarm her. His child bride was growing up fast indeed. “Do you think we’ll meet with trouble?” she asked now.
“I don’t think it’s safe to assume anything until we reach England, but there’s hope I’ll be proven wrong. God knows that has happened enough. If we can maintain your story of Doña Manuela and her idiot spouse—did I recall to thank you for your quick thinking? You saved my life, child.”
“And my own.” Thea faced him squarely. “If you’re grateful you can prove it by calling me by my name, or anything but child. I am not a child.”
His mouth curled wryly. “My apologies.” He bowed with just the same manner she had seen in her cousin William when he soothed his children. That was worse than being called a child to her face. Obstinately Thea closed her mouth and refused to say anything until it was nearly sundown. The day was uneventful, a blessing for them. Now, when they stopped, Matlin made a good effort at his imbecile role; he scratched his head and took so much time between words that anyone he spoke with—soldier or passerby stopping to exchange the news—soon gave up, frustrated. Through each exchange Thea sat, convincingly silent and meek, but when they were alone she glared at Matlin in a decidedly unsubservient manner.
Toward dusk Matlin told her, “I was hoping to reach Villarino de los Aires tonight, but it seems as though we won’t.”
“Am I slowing you down?” Thea asked. It was the first full sentence she had said in hours; her tone was hardly conciliatory. Matlin was at a loss to understand her or how to treat her. Should he tease her from her sullenness? Should he reassure her?
“Slowing me down?” he repeated finally. “If it weren’t for you I would assuredly be in that damnable shack still and playing the simpleton. You’ve been the useful one, ch—Thea. I merely tend the mules.” He finished with a touch of spurious humility that made Thea giggle shyly.
At last it was too dark to go on further. They had been travelling along the bank of a river for some time. “We’ll have to cross it sometime, but I doubt if any ferryman will want to carry us tonight. There are entirely too many of Boney’s fellows abroad on these roads for my taste. What do you think, heroine? Shall we find a place to camp?”
“Away from the road,” Thea suggested. This near the border they saw more and more evidence of the occupation and more than once Thea had slipped into the role of a distressed wife, whining softly of her trials, poor simple husband, the wedding she had missed, the favor that had gone to her cousin Estella. Probably the French paid them no notice anyway, but the imposture made Thea feel better, as if she were doing something indeed. “Lord, I’m coming to hate ‘Manuela,’” she muttered in English. “What a dreadful shrew she is!”
“But a lifesaver, nonetheless. What do you expect, with a husband like Miguel? We’re not cutting very heroic figures, are we, my dear?”
It was lucky then that the light was fading; Matlin did not see the color which came to Thea’s cheeks at his offhand endearment.
“Where shall we stop?” she asked.
“Can you bear to go a little farther, beyond that stand of trees? It looks as though they will afford us a little cover.”
Obediently Thea nudged her mule forward. The obliging animal, surely as tired now as she was herself, stumbled after Matlin’s mule, and their patience was rewarded. The stand of trees hid a tiny shack, barely six feet to a side. “A roof,” Matlin exulted. “Tonight, my child, you shall have a fire. By God, I’m damned if I don’t find us something better to eat than the heel of that bread.”
While Matlin went in search of food or information or whatever else was to be had—Thea placed little reliance upon food and, knowing his Spanish, not much more upon information—she worked on the hut. After she cleared it, sweeping the floor with a bunch of twigs until it was not clean but relatively smooth and inviting, she arranged their bundles against one wall. Then she set about making a fire, gathering leaves and sticks, and poking the cobwebs out of the smoke-hole in the hut’s roof. They might have a smoky night of it but at least they would be warm. She agonised for some minutes over the striking of a spark: Matlin had taken the tinderbox away in his pocket. At last, triumphantly, Thea beheld a small flame in the heart of her tinder. Having done her best to make a home for the night, she sat back against the wall to wait for her husband.
He returned after what seemed like hours to Thea. “There’s a farm over the rise. I bought some food there and told our story. Miguel and Manuela’s, in any case, and I don’t doubt they believe me an imbecile as you could wish. Damning to my ego, but better my self-esteem than my neck.... Or yours.”
“Thanks,” Thea said.
“I have news. I’ll tell you while we eat.” He set his sack down by the fire and looked about him. “You’ve been busy: started a fire, cleaned the place. What a housewife you are.” He smiled at her. “Clever child.”
Matlin missed the face Thea made at him. Child again! Already he had forgotten his promise.
He turned again and reached for his sack. “Not haute cuisine, I regret, but it will do for an evening. What a world of dinners we shall have to make up for when we reach London, eh? Here’s bread.” He produced a small round loaf. “Some cheese and sausage, of course....” Two almost identical lumps, smelling strongly of garlic. “And wine! Come, my dear, smile. We dine like kings tonight, with a roof over our heads and a table....” He mimed a long formal dining table laden with the best silver and china, and a sideboard piled with delicious things to eat.
Giddily, Thea responded in kind. “Would you like a slice of roast duckling? Or pigeon in tarragon?” She shifted closer to the fire and began to slice the round loaf with Matlin’s knife.
“I thought a bite of terrapin to start, or a bit of pig’s cheek. I’m partial to that.” Thea recorded this information as she handed him a thick slice of bread. “And of course, a glass of burgundy? An excellent vintage, my love. May I pour you a glass?” Triumphantly he produced a tiny, misshapen tin cup from one pocket and poured a splash of dark, vinegary red wine into it. “Milady?”
Thea giggled and inclined her head. “My lord.”
“To your continued good health and beauty.” He took a healthy swig from the wine bottle. “And now, perhaps you will pass me a morsel of....” He gestured questioningly at the cheese.
“Venison?” Thea suggested dubiously. Matlin nodded agreeably, smeared his bread with cheese and the sausage, and swallowed it quickly. He took another long draught of wine, making a face. “Some pretenses are easier to carry out than others,” he admitted ruefully and wiped his chin with a dusty sleeve.
They kept up the charade for the rest of the meal, getting sillier as they went, dining on quail eggs and breast of lion. In between toasts and grand courtesies Matlin told her what he had learned: the new king, Fernando, had gone to Bayonne, in France, to meet with Bonaparte.
“It’s madness; apparently Fernando has some idea that Bonaparte will marry him to a French princess and take him under the protection of the Empire. So he has delivered himself into the hands of the French, and it seems that the old king and his wife are going to Bayonne as well. I wonder how long it will take for Bonaparte to announce that he has taken Spain for its own good.”
“Doesn’t anyone care? The people, I mean?”
“When I escaped from Madrid after Fernando forced his father’s abdication, the people all thought it was the dawn of a better day, that the Prince would keep Bonaparte at bay, work wonders, bring Spain back as a power. Now? I think they begin to see Fernando isn’t a savior, at least. God knows when the worm will turn. I hope we’re well away when it does. Dorothea? Do you wish you had stayed safe at the convent? This is hardly the life for a delicately bred girl....”
“But there’d have been no quail eggs or breast of lion, either.” Thea sipped her wine slowly, savoring the rough, sour burr it left on her tongue. “I’d have been learning Latin and hating it. I’d just as soon have the adventure, thank you.” She licked her fingers for punctuation.
Matlin drank his own wine in grateful swallows and stared at the orange glow of the fire. “It hasn’t been boring, certainly. But a girl like you, travelling this way, facing these dangers...not that you haven’t faced them well,” he added hurriedly. “I promised not to call you child, didn’t I? I’ll try to remember that.” He looked angrily at his hands and saw beyond them: “Your Silvy, Mother Beatriz, they must have been out of their minds to let you come with me.”
The supper was a wreckage of oiled paper and crumbs on the dirt floor. Thea began methodically to clear the mess away. “Mother thought it was mad,” she said after a moment. “Silvy was the one who told me to go, finally. My dear old silly Silvy, who was never so happy in her life as at the convent when the nuns took us in, but that day, the day we were married, she started saying things, that if I could not give myself to God entirely—oh, fusty stuff. I think she meant I had to take my chances, and I have.” Thea looked into the fire and saw Silvy’s long, sunken face and feverish eyes, her slender bony hands which had clutched her own so tightly. “My God, she was so ill; how could I not have seen?”
In the hot light of the embers, shaking with grief and lightheaded from the unaccustomed wine, Thea began to weep for Silvy.
Matlin stared at her, dismayed. She had simply dropped her head to her knees as she sat, clutching herself together tightly as if she was afraid she might fall apart altogether, rocking silently, shaking, her hair touched with gold by the dying fire. He reached an uncertain hand to her and pulled it back; he watched her and was paralyzed by her tears.
“What did she say to you?” he asked at last.
Thea sniffed and raised her head. Her face was wet with tears, her eyes red-rimmed. “It sounds stupid. Unless one wanted to be a Bride of God, that sort of thing—I mean, unless one really had a vocation, it would be better to take a chance. For children, I suppose she meant. Do you know, I always supposed, the way a child might, that Silvy was happy to be just as fusty and careful and spinsterish as she was, and all those years she wanted....” Tears overwhelmed her. Thea dropped her head again.
This time Matlin did not stop to think. He put his arm about Thea’s shoulders and held her as if she were a babe. She was not a child, though. Through the heavy folds of dress and jacket he could feel decidedly unchildlike contours, the softness of her breast and the swell of her hip under his hand. Startled, he thought: but she’s so young. He looked down at the shivering, mournful girl in his arms, his wife.
“Here,” he said unsteadily and twisted away from her for a moment. “Drink this.” He filled the tin cup with wine and held it to her lips. Sniffing, Thea obeyed, and Matlin swallowed what remained in the bottle before he turned to her again.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. The shawl was bunched around her shoulders, a frame for her face and tousled, dust-darkened hair. Her eyes were dark, the lashes still wet with tears. “I didn’t mean to do that.” She looked up at him; her face was very close to his, unguarded. Matlin stirred uncomfortably, very much aware of his one hand still across her shoulder. “Matlin, don’t be angry.”
“I’m not,” he said thickly. Which of them moved, he could not say, but when Dorothea’s face was inches from his he stopped remembering her age, their situation, everything, and drew her abruptly toward him.
She did not fight. Her arms came up around his neck willingly and her mouth was as hungry as his. As they dropped down onto the brushed dirt floor Thea was distantly aware of small things: the glow of embers through her half-shut eyes; the call of a nightbird outside in the trees; the coarse fabric against her skin as Matlin opened her blouse, and the touch of his fingers. Just once, when he pulled away from her, she opened her eyes to stare up into his. “Mi esposo,” she murmured, and it was true.