Two days were spent in the cave. Then, finally, the rains and storms had spent their fury. The hill roads were dangerous, for rocks slid down in small avalanches, tumbling on to the dirt roads. But they had to go on. They hitched up the horses. Sonia stood well back while Jacob drove the barouche down to the road. Then she followed, helping him pack up their trunks and valises once more.
“The boxes?” she asked in a low tone. “They are all right, the ones with the paper?”
“Covered with oil-slicked cloth,” he murmured, nodding.
They proceeded. She hung out the laundry, changing the pieces as each dried in the sun and wind. Her lips turned up in a smile, for it looked funny to see her undergarments hanging over the sombre black doors of the barouche.
They went on and on, Jacob kept a sharp lookout for dust on the roads. But, about a week later, as they were nearing the south of France, he was fooled.
A troop of cavalry galloped out of the grassy hills, and just into their path on the road. Jacob pulled the horses to a stop and called down softly to Sonia. “French cavalry. Make sure your face is powdered and lined.”
“All right,” she called back. She had seen them coming. Reaching hastily for her valise, she powdered her face with the greying powder, added some to her hair where it showed below the bonnet. Now she took a black charcoal pencil and underlined her eyes lightly, and drew small lines about her mouth and chin. It made an incredible difference, aging her by twenty years. She let her shoulders slump. The fact that she was tired from the journey helped.
The French lieutenant ordered Jacob down from the driver’s seat. Some troopers came to peer in through the windows.
“It is my sister,” she heard Jacob explaining respectfully. “This is her paper, this is mine. She goes to bury her husband —”
“Bury her husband?” came the incredulous words. “How can that be?”
Someone flung open the door of the barouche. Sonia gazed at them with narrowed eyes, her black bonnet firmly in place. A soldier reached in.
“You come out, ma’am,” he said curtly, but with courtesy. He helped her out. She staggered a little as she came down the steps, and he caught her arm. “There you are, ma’am. What is your name? Why are you on the roads?”
She quavered. “I am Madame Lestair, Madame François Lestair. My husband — my poor dear husband —” She caught her breath, put her handkerchief to her face, and continued. “He is dead. He is dead!”
“Calm yourself, my dear sister,” said Jacob, moving nearer to her, anxiety on his face. He also wore sombre black. “They will understand our mission.”
“You should not be on the roads without a permit,” said the lieutenant sharply.
“We have a permit here,” and Jacob began to fumble in his pockets, as though permits were far from his mind. “Ah — in this pocket — I believe. No — here,” and he produced it and gave it over.
The lieutenant examined it keenly, dubiously. “Ah — to the south of France, you say? For what reason?”
“To bury her husband. She has set her heart on burying him in the cemetery where our parents are buried,” said Jacob, in a low tone, glancing furtively at his “sister” with the handkerchief to her face. “So upset was she —”
“But carrying a body through France! It is not permitted!” said the lieutenant, snapping the words importantly. “It is against the law! It can cause disease!”
“No — no —” said Jacob, and waved vaguely to the coach. “He is there, in that urn —”
“Urn?” The lieutenant went to the coach, stared at the small black and gold urn.
“Yes, it is François,” said Sonia, her voice breaking. “All that remains of my dear, dear François! To transport him to our cemetery it was necessary to burn his beautiful body. How I wept! But no one would listen. I carry his ashes — all that remains of my beautiful François —” She began to sob as though actually in earnest.
Through her wails, she heard Jacob explaining hastily and apologetically to the guard. “It was the only way they would allow us to transport his — his remains. My sister was much upset — she still weeps about it. I pray you, do not set her off again, it has been difficult enough for her —” And he gave a heartfelt sigh.
The troopers still insisted on peering into the coach to see the contents of the trunks. They pawed through the black garments, but missed the gold concealed in the linings. One muttered that he wanted to lift the lid of the urn. The lieutenant, turning pale, finally did so, sniffed, sneezed, and set it back hastily. He sealed it with a red wax bearing his insignia.
Sonia wept through it all, quietly but steadily. All she had to do to make herself weep was to think, what if Alastair was in that urn? And she could weep as though her heart were breaking. Jacob kept patting her shoulder, murmuring to her soothingly, while keeping an anxious eye on the troopers poking about the coach.
They were finally allowed to continue. Jacob was shaking on the coach seat, and Sonia felt rather faint herself. In the distance, they could see the mountains of the south of France, towards the border with Spain. But they were miles off yet.
Now Jacob began to consult a ciphered map he had in his pocket, drawn on oiled paper. He watched sharply for landmarks. They travelled only at night. In the daytime, they drew up the coach in deep woods or into small caves fronting on the ocean.
The end of the fourth week came, and Sonia was becoming weary and desolate. Alastair must be raging — or, worse, indifferent. She had never dreamed it would take so long.
Then they were in the mountains. The night closed in about them, but did not hide them from the eyes of the shrewd and wary Basques to whom the mountains were home. Jacob was stopped on the road by some burly shepherds in thick woolly coats, with their sheep baa-ing about their heels.
“Where do you go? Who are you?” They kept asking sharp questions in accented French and Spanish.
Jacob said something. They relaxed, and said they would take him across the mountains. Sonia could only suppose they were enemies of the French.
They rode again by night. By day, they hid in the crude homes of Basque shepherds. They crossed the mountains, some with snow on them. Sonia gazed at the white powder in amazement. When they got out of the barouche to rest the horses for a time, she walked about in the cold snow, picking some up in her hands. She did not often see snow now. In her childhood, she had seen it in the mountains of Austria. She remembered one joyful holiday when she and her parents had gone to Salzburg and walked through a snow field. It made tears come to her eyes, remembering that far-off time.
Did her parents look down from heaven on the doings of their beloved young daughter with amazement and fear? Perhaps they kept watch over her, and protected her. She prayed a little that night, thinking of them. In her prayers she remembered to include Alastair, to find him comfort — if he was at all concerned about her. For her own safety, she cared little. Her future seemed dim. But the gold and specie must get through. She did care about that.
Then they were over the mountains and down into green lush valleys. The soil was red, yet the fields grew thick with green and golden wheat. The Basques left them, and soon Jacob met some Spaniards. They were darkened by the sun, and Sonia thought they had fierce cruel eyes. They stared at her indifferently, for she was made up all the time now, with greyed powder and black lines on her face. They thought her wizened and elderly, there in the hot sunlight in her crumpled black dress and thick black bonnet.
“Yes, we take you. You have money?” they asked.
“No, but I must get my sister to safety. Her husband is dead, and she wishes to bury his ashes in their home cemetery west of Madrid —” Jacob deftly altered the story according to the territory. His Spanish was as good as Sonia’s own. The Spaniards helped them through, warning them of the vicious dogs of French soldiers who had ravaged their land.
August had slipped past, and it was now September. Jacob began to seem worried. They travelled only at night, and only o
n deserted country lanes — mere dirt ruts. They heard of battles in the distance. The Spanish folk were angry and sullen.
A band of Spanish guerrillas caught up with them. Jacob told them they hoped to escape the horrible French. The guerrillas helped them on to another band, and to another. The barouche rolled its ponderous way across the north of Spain, down the coast, and finally, one great night, they crossed the border into Portugal.
Their most recent Spanish guerrilla protectors had told them of the Portuguese armies and the Ordenanza. These were Portuguese peasants who wore no uniforms but fought like devils, said the Spanish admiringly. The Spaniards worked secretly with these former enemies, for they were united in a common cause — the expulsion of the hated French troops of Napoleon from their peninsula.
The Portuguese men wore woollen caps, breeches and short brown cloaks. They carried few firearms, but did have pikes, knives — any weapons that came to hand. When the French caught them, they ruled they were “out of uniform,” hanging them in spite of General Wellington’s protests.
Jacob drove on, and soon they encountered their first band of these Ordenanza. They swarmed about the barouche, demanded to see their papers, and broke out in excited language when they saw they were in French. Sonia came out of the barouche, and began to talk to them in Portuguese. They stared at her.
“What is a lady such as yourself doing in Portugal?” they asked her sharply, again and again.
Disregarding Jacob’s quick rebuke, she said simply, “We have an important message for the great General Wellington. We have come far to find and talk with him. Can you take us to him?”
They muttered among themselves, and gave Sonia and Jacob dark suspicious looks. Finally their leader, a young man of more noble appearance, whom Sonia suspected of being more than a peasant, came to them.
“We have decided to trust you. We will take you to Wellington. But the trip is long and dangerous.”
Sonia smiled faintly. “We have come a long way,” she said. “The best part of our journey is yet to come.”
He gave her a keen look and nodded. “I comprehend,” he said, and she thought he did. He might know of these secret missions that brought gold and specie down to Wellington. Perhaps he had helped the money get through before. “The general is at Gouveia. We take you there.”
They did as much, and Sonia was intensely grateful to them. These rough peasants and their more aristocratic leader certainly knew the countryside. They took them through rough passes, barely scars in the mountains, across rivers, including the Douro, of which the dispatches and gazettes had been full after the battle there in May, 1809.
Always guarded and surrounded by the Portuguese, Sonia and Jacob rode in comfort in the carriage, letting their rude escort conduct them south. They came to Gouveia , and Sonia was about to get out of the carriage when the leader stopped her.
“I think Wellington is not here now,” he said quietly. “I will find out where he is.”
Disappointment clouded her features. She sank back and gazed at Jacob. He nodded reassuringly. “The generals are always moving on, and we must catch up,” was all he said.
Would they ever reach Wellington and his army? Sonia felt as though their goal was like a distant horizon, ever receding from them. She bit her lips and tried to keep her fears from overwhelming her. She was intensely weary from weeks of tension and keeping on guard. She had been sleeping poorly, and when she did sleep, would dream of Alastair. She would waken with tears on her cheeks.
She was thinner than ever, as was Jacob, his cheeks sunken under his beard. They had not eaten a decent meal since the schooner. They both felt their energies dissipating. Yet, they must keep going, they must go on. They could not fail with their goal finally within reach.
The Portuguese leader returned, seeming satisfied. “We shall go on. He is at Bussaco, I have heard.” He seemed more than pleased; he seemed eager and excited, under his contained cool manner. Sonia wondered. Could they really trust him?
Jacob leaned forwards. “Where are the French?”
At his sharp voice, the leader smiled, a grim satisfied smile. “Not far,” he said. “If we are in luck, we shall be in time for the battle. The old fox, General Massena, against the leopard, Wellington. A great battle, eh?”
“My Lord in Heaven,” muttered Jacob, putting his hand to his face. The leader laughed and shut the door of the barouche. He swung up on to the seat, to cluck at the weary horses.
They were off again. “What did he mean?” whispered Sonia fearfully.
Jacob said shortly, for his temper was wearing thin, “It seems we are going to be in time for the confrontation between Napoleon’s favourite general and England’s!”
Sonia gazed at him, her grey eyes wide. “A battle?”
They drove on, day and night, halting only to refresh the horses. The Portuguese escort had obtained horses and were keeping up with them. By means of their own, they had armed themselves with ancient blunderbusses and a few muskets. Jacob whispered, “French-made — they must have met sentries or advance pickets somewhere.” Sonia shuddered.
The carriage began to climb uphill; it seemed a long painful climb. Sonia would glance outside and shiver at the fearful sight: sheer cliffs all about them, rose-red rocks. At one point she saw a seering perpendicular cliff of grey granite until the road twisted. She saw it again later. They seemed to be climbing up behind that cliff.
Finally, the barouche rolled to a halt. Voices shouted the challenge — in English!
Jacob poked his head out, then got out of the carriage hurriedly. “Good day, good day!” he said excitedly, with respect.
A cool deep voice responded to him. “ Mr Goldfine, it is very good to see you. I hope you bring me good news?”
“The best of good news,” said Jacob, a choke in his voice. He turned to the barouche, and helped Sonia down. The Portuguese were beaming proudly. They had brought welcome visitors to the great general, and now were seeing him themselves. This was a great day!
Sonia was looking at a very tall handsome man, plainly attired in a hat without plume and a dark grey cloak. He stared at her, then smiled and took her hand gently.
“You are most welcome. Come in — we are quartered here in the convent in some comfort.” Holding the great general’s hand, Sonia was escorted through whitewashed walls into a small room furnished with a table and some chairs. Maps were spread on the table. The general ordered them removed, and tea and hot food brought.
He and Jacob conversed in low tones. Presently, the boxes were brought in. Sonia counted them automatically, even as she drank the scaldingly hot tea. Twelve, thirteen — yes, they were all there. Those precious, terrifying boxes…
Then Sonia remembered the Portuguese men, and started up. She went to her valise, removed a small bag of gold coins concealed in the lining, and said, “I must speak to the men who brought us here.”
Jacob was busy, the general merely nodded absently. Sonia went out, her bonnet removed, her face so weary and lined that the soldiers merely glanced incuriously at her. She found the Portuguese strolling about, looking everywhere. Their leader stood near the barouche, watching as the floorboards were being pounded back into place.
He turned with a gentle smile for her. His gaze sharpened as he saw her face. He bowed. “You have arrived and are happy, madam?” he asked.
“Very happy. I am most grateful. Please — will you accept our gratitude and this little money — for your men,” she added hastily, as his head went up proudly.
He bowed gracefully. She thought again, this was no peasant. “For my men — I accept,” he said with a smile. “And you, madam? What do you do?”
“I do not know. It is in the hands of the Lord,” she said.
“As all things are,” he answered. He slipped the bag of gold into his coat pocket, and stood watching her as she returned to the small room of the convent.
Jacob Goldfine and General Wellington were counting the boxes with satisfaction.
“And there is more on the way?” asked the general, anxiously. He caught their looks. “You see, my soldiers’ pay is in arrears,” he said simply. “They cannot live and fight on the land. Until your — contact — arranged it, the money did not get through and my poor fellows were in a bad way. I am very thankful that he is so clever. I will thank him personally when I return at last to England.”
“More is on the way,” said Jacob. “In what way and manner I do not know, but it is coming. Always. You may be sure of it.”
General Wellington drew a deep sigh. His voice was quietly thankful. “That is good, that is very good. Now we can fight. But first, what may I do for you? Which way will you go?”
Jacob stared at him. “Do you know — I thought so hard about how to get here that I never considered how we would return?”
The men laughed. Sonia managed a smile. She was so tired she could have cried, and every bone in her body ached. But they had arrived, they had done it, they had delivered the gold.
“For now, you must rest,” said Wellington, and gave orders for their comfort. That night Sonia slept in a bed. For the first time since mid-July, she was alone in a room by herself. She stretched out gratefully. She did not know what the morrow would bring, or how they would get home. But she knew some satisfaction — the mission was completed.
In the morning, she was awakened abruptly to the sounds of shouts and distant firing. She sat up, completely awake, listening.
She did not know then, but soon learned, that the Battle of Bussaco had begun that twenty-seventh of September.
CHAPTER 15
Sonia dressed hastily and went out to the main room. Jacob stood there, bending over a map with one of Wellington’s aides. He turned as she came in.
“Madam, you must be ready to leave at once; the battle has been joined!” the aide said.
“I am ready,” she said faintly, looking at Jacob.
He nodded. “I have maps and some food. Come, I will take your trunk and valise to the barouche. The horses are standing.”
Star Sapphire: Love and wild adventure in Regency England Page 18
