There was no time to wash or eat. She ran out to the great coach and a soldier helped her inside. There was much firing now, though dawn had scarcely broken, and a thick white mist seemed to swirl about the heights of the grey cliff. Wellington came to see them off. He wore his usual plume-less cocked hat and a grey greatcoat.
“Good luck, goodbye, and thank you a million times,” he said, taking her hand gently in his. “You have my letters and instructions to the men at Lisbon. They will see you aboard one of our transports, to return to England as soon as possible.”
They thanked him hastily, and were off. The horses were rested, and had eaten. Jacob drove down the narrow winding road to meet the road to Coimbra.
Even as they rode, the firing increased. Great blasts of cannon burst on their ears, and Sonia put her hands over her own to dull the sounds. Still they pounded, pounded, mingled with the lighter crack-crack of musket fire and small arms.
The barouche jolted down the steep incline which finally became the main road. It seemed to go behind the great grey cliff, gaunt and stiff beside them. Over the top of the cliffs they saw men crawling.
Jacob drove more slowly, Sonia peering out to see what was happening. Then she saw the men, bloody, maimed, calling out to each other, hands held up beseechingly. They were falling down over the rocks, down to the road. Jacob’s caution was understood. The wounded horses were falling into the road, and so were the men. One horse, maddened by its wounds and the cracking of muskets, pounded past them, foaming at the mouth, its eyes wildly rolling. From the saddle hung the limp form of a man in uniform, his head bouncing on the road. Sonia drew back, putting her handkerchief to her face in horror.
Still the shouts and the shots went on, and on, and on, deafeningly. The barouche slowed to a crawl. Sonia heard men and women shouting, children crying. She had to look out again. As they neared Coimbra, whole families were joining in the mad torrent to escape the battle. Poor, wealthy, middle-class, beggars, farmers, finely dressed women — they were all pushing baggage carts or riding horseback, clutching the few possessions they had managed to save.
Jacob shouted down, “Lock the doors, Sonia! Show your pistol at the window! Do not let any enter!”
Horrified, she saw hands clutching at the doors of the barouche and faces held up piteously. She heard them begging for a ride to get them away from the battle zone. At first she wanted to help — but the shouts of Jacob deterred her. She showed the pistol and yelled at them as he had directed.
He whipped up the horses and sped them past the first wave of terrified people.
In a quiet place on the road further on, he paused to let the horses breathe. He jumped down to make sure Sonia was all right.
“I could not let them in. They would have tossed us out and taken the coach,” he explained breathlessly, his face white behind the black beard. “People do not reason in times like this, the feeling for rescuing one’s self is too strong. They would have killed us both.”
He glanced back over the road, and said, “Eat something as we ride, there is no more time to stop.” He got up again into the driver’s seat, and they went on, just ahead of the refugees, until they entered into Coimbra.
Behind them thundered the guns of battle, ahead of them the screams and shouts of people who had lingered too long in the safety of their homes, thinking the battle would never touch them. Now they fled, with anything they could carry.
Jacob fought off men with his whip, and grimly pushed the horses on through the crowded streets. Sonia gulped back nausea as she saw the scenes. There were wounded French prisoners of war, their blood as red as their uniforms, lying in the streets, to be spat at and walked over … Portuguese men in their rough brown cloaks … British soldiers, eyes wild, plundering the houses, some even before their frightened inhabitants had fled…
They went on, making it through the town. People were streaming down the road towards Lisbon. Some paused to rest in the fields, eyes vacant, terror on their faces.
Before the day was over, more joined that frightened throng. Sonia saw more and more British soldiers, whole units marching together. She wondered what had happened, and how long they could keep on with their horses tiring.
Then she saw him…
“Jacob! Stop!” she shouted, and pounded on the roof of the carriage.
“I cannot — you are mad!” he shouted back.
“No — there are our friends who took us to Wellington — stop — stop!” Sonia screamed at Jacob frantically. She had recognized the face of the leader of the peasants — he was leaning on the shoulders of his comrades, his foot bound in bloody rags, his head bare, his face full of suffering.
Jacob pulled the barouche to a halt and Sonia opened the door. As a dozen people tried to get in, she called over their heads frantically to the Portuguese Ordenanza, “Come, come, you who helped us before!”
The leader lifted his head, gazed at her, then barked orders at the two men holding him up. They pushed through the crowd, using words in Portuguese that Sonia had never learned. Then the wounded man was pushed into the carriage opposite Sonia. Another man followed him in, slamming shut the door and locking it, shouting obscene insults at the mob. A thud on the seat above them — the other man had joined Jacob on the driving seat.
“Well,” said the leader, and a slow wry smile lit his darkened smoke-blackened face. “It is your turn to rescue us, eh?”
She managed to smile back at him. “I hope so, sir, the turmoil is terrifying. You were — in the battle?”
“Yes, last night it began about an hour before dawn. Our part did not last long.” He grimaced. “I think I stick now to my former role of carrying messages.”
He moved his bandaged foot, and the pain seemed to shoot through him. The man beside him had a bullet in one shoulder and another in his hip, but he set his teeth and said little. Jacob yelled above them, and used his whip, and the man with him shouted insults at the crowd.
The aristocratic leader of the Portuguese peasants said mildly, “I think they will manage. But the horses tire. We will halt at a place I know about two miles down the road. There we can hold off the rabble… They should have evacuated Coimbra as ordered and not waited until the last minute.”
“Did — did General Wellington know there would be a battle?” asked Sonia naively.
He smiled a little, kindly. “All the earth knew it, madam. Wellington gave orders to scorch the earth before him, so the French could not live off the land. Up to now, it has worked. The general planned this site at Bussaco for a stand against the French. Now the battle comes. If only those fools of Coimbra had obeyed his orders and left, burning the stores of grain and foods also, all might have been well. Now, they choke the roads in their flights, and it will be a bad time.”
He leaned forwards to gaze from the window of the barouche. “We come close,” he shouted up to Jacob. “Take the road to the right, and go a half-mile to the small farm. There we will stop for the night!”
Jacob obeyed, turning off. Presently the carriage drawn by the weary horses pulled to a halt in a farmyard. It was empty. No one was in the farmhouse.
“I pray to God the owners left early and did not join this mad flight,” muttered the Portuguese man.
He hobbled down, his man there to give a devoted anxious arm to him. Ignoring him, the leader turned to give Sonia a hand out of the carriage. He gave her his little wry grin.
“Madam, I think you are somewhat younger than you would have us believe,” he said, gazing at her face. She had forgotten the grey powder and black lines in her anxiety to be off.
Jacob had slid down from his seat, and came up to them hastily, his worried look on Sonia. “This is my sister,” he began gruffly.
Sonia lifted her hand. “He deserves the truth from us now,” she said in rebuke. “We have saved each other’s lives, I believe. I am Sonia Goldfine Charlton, Lady Fairley, of England. This is my cousin, Jacob Goldfine.”
The man stared, losing his smile.
“Lady Fairley? You are married, then.” He glanced at her hand, ringless. “Your husband permits you to make this mad journey?”
Jacob stiffened. “It was necessary,” he said curtly. “And your name, sir?”
The man bowed, a strange sight in that modest farmyard — it was more suited to a ballroom, with glittering candles and the perfume of grand ladies. “Paulo de Mondego, at your service, Lady Fairley.”
Sonia offered her hand. He carried it to his lips and touched it lightly. Then he let it go gently.
“Now for some water, hot food and bait for the horses. Carlo, Juan — you watch for a time, then I will watch.”
The men obeyed him instantly, taking their weapons in grip, one facing the road, the other the fields behind them. Jacob went to unhitch the horses. Paulo helped him, limping noticeably. Sonia went to the well, and drew up the bucket of water.
She carried the bucket into the kitchen, and there stared around, amazed. The owners must have fled in great haste, for the table was still set for breakfast, the food cooked on the stove, done almost to burning. She rescued the hot pan using the thick pad nearby. Jacob came in, followed by Paulo de Mondego.
“They must have gone in much haste,” she told them. They nodded, glancing about. Paulo limped into the adjoining room. She heard him moving about.
“Do not confide too much, Sonia,” growled Jacob in a low tone. “We are strangers here. Best to say little.”
Sonia nodded, her mouth compressed. Her impulse was to feel safe with Paulo, but who could know? Nevertheless, she realized she had felt better these last two days than she had felt in two months. They were with friends.
She served the forgotten breakfast. Jacob and Paulo ate, then went out on guard while Carlo and Juan came in for their meal. They seemed shy with her, keeping their faces averted while they ate hastily.
Paulo returned after his men had left. “There is a bedroom on the second floor where sheets are still on the bed. All is in order there, Lady Fairley,” he said formally. “I think you had better rest while you can.”
“I was preparing some food against tomorrow,” she said, indicating the table and stove. She was cooking some meat while rolling out the bread dough, which had been rising all day.
“A good idea. If you prepare enough for three days, we will probably arrive at my house in Lisbon before the food is gone,” he said with a smile. He added, “So you can cook, also?”
“Yes, sir… it was necessary in the old days.”
He sat down, propping up his injured foot, and began to clean some vegetables he had gathered from the small garden outside the window. He was deft with a knife, and meticulous in washing the vegetables. Jacob came in as they worked, looking anxiously from one to the other, but seemed relieved that they were contentedly working at their tasks.
He helped pack up the vegetables, and said, “You go off to sleep, Sonia. We will pack up the meat and bread in the morning.”
“The bread is not yet baked,” she protested, glancing towards the brick oven door.
“We will take it out when it is finished,” promised Paulo. “The room is the first at the top of the stairs.”
“Thank you, then. Good night.”
She went up to the room and was grateful to find her trunk there. She opened her valise, looked about for water, and found a full jug and a clean basin on a small table near the window. Paulo had provided well. She smiled, removed her clothes, and washed for the first time in weeks. It felt so good. She rinsed out a couple of things, hung them near the window to dry, and went thankfully to bed.
It was the last sleep she was to have for four more nights. When they started off again in the morning, it was to find the roads clogged with refugees, making yesterday’s journey seem like a pleasant excursion. They were thankful again and again for the presence of Paulo and his two men — burly, scowling peasants who kept the carriage from being overturned as the hysterical fleeing residents of Coimbra and the countryside fled towards Lisbon and further for safety.
Sonia found time to say to Paulo, “Whatever is it? Why are they so maddened? I thought you said that Wellington was winning the battle?”
“So he is. The French are defeated. We heard it on the road today,” he said wearily. She thought his foot gave him much pain, but he would not speak of it. “Yet still he has ordered retreat. I do not know why. I pray God he knows why!”
The next day, they heard that Wellington’s soldiers were indeed retreating. The roads were now clogged with soldiers as well as civilians. From Coimbra, the prisoners in jails and the insane in asylums screamed to be let out, for the town was on fire and they feared being burned alive. Wellington gave orders, and the British soldiers freed them, to escape as best they could. So murderers and madmen joined the wild flight down the Lisbon road.
Once Paulo said sharply, while gazing out of the window, “Do not look, I pray you.”
But he was too late. Sonia had seen the man strung up on the tree. Near him, grotesquely, was a mirror in which his swinging body was reflected, swaying gently in the wind. She put her hand to her mouth.
“Why — why?” she managed to choke out.
“Probably for looting,” said Paulo. He turned her about so she did not look again. “The mirror was gilded and much prized, no doubt.” There was irony and sadness in his voice. “One thinks of foolish things in the midst of the fight for life.”
He leaned back, and did not speak for a time. The horses were toiling uphill. Paulo leaned out to gaze, keenly, intently.
“Ah — so that is it! The leopard has outfoxed the fox!” he muttered.
Later, he explained. He saw fortifications, which later were called the Lines of Torres Vedras — three lines of fortifications which Wellington had ordered prepared in secret. The secret, amazingly, had been kept for a year. The British had retreated into the mountains, not towards the sea, where the French might have flung them from the Peninsula. As the French advanced, their fate was being sealed.
They drove on through the hills, pausing only to rest the horses, bait them, and feed themselves. Then they drove on and on. Over the mountain passes, where grim cannon lay concealed behind the lines of Wellington. Down into the valleys, towards Lisbon…
Finally, one night at dusk, they drove into the city. It was amazing to see lights, to hear music and laughter.
Paulo smiled at their surprise. “Yes, Lisbon still dances, on and on,” he said wearily. “Some do not even know we fight. Thank God enough know that they are prepared to defend our country. We have been invaded enough — we ought to know how to act!”
He took them to his townhouse. Then indeed Sonia and Jacob knew they were dealing with a nobleman, for the house was a grand one on one of the main avenues. His servants came running to bid the party welcome. A doctor came to tend to the injuries. Soon they were all comfortable.
Sonia slept deeply; indeed, it seemed she would never sleep enough. And she was so hot… The doctor felt her forehead anxiously. “A fever,” he muttered to Jacob, and gave her some medicines.
Nightmare followed nightmare. She thought someone fed her from a porcelain cup of white and purple. She saw Jacob’s bearded anxious face as in a haze, with white mist swirling about him. Paulo came, peered down at her, and shook his head. “Shock,” he said. “It is too much for the delicate lady.”
She wanted to protest that she was not delicate, that she could endure, as much as any man. But her tongue was thick and she could not utter the words.
When the haze finally lifted, she was so weak she could not sit up. But the fever was gone. She was so cool and comfortable she wanted never to move. She gazed about her bedroom wonderingly, for she had never seen such quiet splendour, even in the finest rooms of London. There were crimson silk draperies about the bed, paintings on the walls, cool blue-green tiles in intricate designs halfway up the walls of the bathroom. An elegant balcony was strewn with tangled vines of crimson and white flowers, which gave off perfumes day and night.
Jacob was anxious to leave. It was the second week of October. They could take ship soon — some transports with Wellington’s injured soldiers were leaving from the port of Lisbon in two days. One ship had cabins for them — Jacob had paid high to get them. Along with the letter from Wellington, it had sufficed.
Paulo did not want her to leave. “You can go later,” he urged. “Let your cousin go without you.”
Jacob scowled. Sonia shook her head. “I must return — home,” she said. “You are — most kind.”
“You are too weak to travel!” said the gentleman vehemently. “And what kind of husband do you have to allow you to make this dreadful journey?”
Her mouth quirked in wry humour. “He did not know, for I left when his back was turned. I have yet to face him!”
“Por Deus!” Sonia had to laugh at his shock.
But it was a weak laugh. She felt languid and disinclined to move. But she had to go with Jacob. She had to go home and face Alastair’s wrath, his questions, and perhaps his cold dislike. He might even leave her. He might be done with her for ever.
She stifled a sigh, and told the kindly Portuguese maid what to pack for her. Her clothes had been cleaned, ironed, washed and mended, and were all in order for her. Her trunk was packed, her valise prepared.
Paulo de Mondego took them down to the ship in his grand carriage. He would keep the barouche against the day when someone might send for it, he said. “In case it is needed again,” he added, “because my poor country still has need of your gallant soldiers.”
He left Sonia at the ship with evident regret, kissing her hand again and again. The look in his eyes told her she might stay and be welcome for ever. But she could not stay, much as she appreciated his unquestioning gallantry.
“You are a brave and a good woman. If your husband does not appreciate you,” he said, half-jokingly, “return again to Lisbon and send me but word!”
Jacob did not like this, and said so to Sonia later, very positively. But she let the matter pass, for she was feeling ill again, and took to her bed in the tiny cabin next to his.
Star Sapphire: Love and wild adventure in Regency England Page 19
