Exhausted, Thea listened while Matlin arranged for their lodging and for the purchase and preparation of dinner. Again she would sleep in the ladies’ room and tonight it was a relief to her. The language here was an odd mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, slurred and rapid; it served as a reminder that although they had crossed the Douro and the border they were not safe. Matlin seemed to manage the business well enough, and here they took his problems in Spanish for the faults of a Spaniard uneasy with Portuguese; since their fright in Peñausende he had been adding little mannerisms to support his character as Miguel, the slow farmer.
“Miguel,” Thea said at last, achieving a weary, shrewish tone without effort. “I am tired. I do not wish to eat. You, with your slow mules and your slow tongue, have kept me from my cousin’s wedding; do not let them keep me from my bed.” She looked with hope at the landlord’s wife, a fat, sighing matron who smelled of sweat and garlic. The woman returned Thea’s look measuringly, liked what she saw, and began to take Thea’s part, abusing Matlin and her own husband on the girl’s behalf. After a moment of rapid invective the woman swept Thea along with her to the women’s dormitory; they had a few minutes of gossip; then the woman exclaimed, “Señora, you look like a ghost! Sleep now; in the morning you shall eat, yes, I shall cook your breakfast myself, with these hands. That brute of a husband shall not trouble you again.”
Thea took that promise, cold comfort indeed, to sleep with her.
o0o
They followed the banks of the Douro southward the next day. The French were as much in evidence in Portugal as they had been in Spain, or perhaps more so, since Portugal was now, putatively a captured nation. Not only soldiers but French agents were everywhere, and Matlin had no wish to raise a question in anyone’s mind, even if they seemed friendly. “There is enough come-and-go across the border, families visiting and so on; if we act as if we are what we say we are, I misdoubt we shall have trouble,” he assured Thea rather heartily. “But better not to seem too careful, either.”
They skirted Lagoaça and, as they travelled, heard less and less of the Spanish-inflected Portuguese; it was harder to make themselves understood as they travelled. “Should we make up a new story? Why would Spanish peasants be travelling in Portugal now?” Thea fretted.
“I have a friend in Peso da Regua,” Matlin told her. “I have hopes he can help us get to Oporto quickly. In which case, I’d rather we not create yet another story to remember. If we cover enough ground today, we can reach his place tomorrow .''.”
Thea nodded. It had begun to feel as if they had always been travelling, would always be travelling. Her life in England, the months in the convent, even the first days of their journey seemed like another lifetime away. Everything dated now from the night they had spent together in the hut. “How far are we from Oporto now?”
“If I’ve judged the way correctly, about three days. Roybal, my friend, should be able to give us news of what ships still anchor in Oporto. There always used to be some privateers flying their own colors off the north coast of the city. Think: in a week we’ll be sailing home.”
The thought should have been more comforting than it was. What home? Thea wondered grimly. She was easily tired, the adventure had become nothing more than a sad, plodding drudgery of travel without even the comfort of daydreams to ease the trip. Riding along, jolted by the familiar slow trot of the mule under her, Thea tried to believe that something would happen to make things right between them. The litany began again in her head: If I am very good, if I wait, perhaps…...if just loving him will do it, and I am very patient. When she glanced at Matlin it was hard to believe that any patience could wear down that distance.
o0o
Matlin was privately as surprised as Thea when he brought them to the gate of Roybal’s home, a small estate a few miles west of Peso da Regua. The villa into which Señor Roybal welcomed them seemed palatial to Thea now, and his welcome, unblinkingly courteous, was the kinder for the fact that he was putting himself and his family in danger by sheltering them. The man took his lead from Matlin, who embraced his friend, announced that Miguel and Manuela had arrived at last, and addressed Roybal liberally as cousin. Roybal, his wife, and his daughters, who were summoned to greet their “cousins,” were uniformly thin, tall, and brown-complexioned. The three girls had their father’s large, protuberant eyes and their mother’s generous mouth and jutting lower lip; the sight of the whole family smiling made Thea giggle mildly. She was to sleep on a real bed, the sheets poorly washed and aired no doubt, but a change from straw ticking and unfamiliar women sharing with her. They were to dine with Roybal and his family; a chicken would be freshly killed and cooked.
“It sounds like heaven,” Thea muttered to Matlin nervously. “But won’t someone wonder who we are?”
“Roybal has a reputation as an openhanded man, and besides that, we’re cousins. They take their family seriously here. The Portuguese have no reason to love Bonaparte, Thea; it’s only the French we have to fear.”
Roybal took them strolling around the villa, past the chicken house and a cooking shed where a small crowd of men were receiving a dole of bread and a cup of soup. Matlin pointed this out to Thea especially as evidence of Roybal’s generosity. Looking at the faces of the men waiting for their food, Thea was not reassured.
After dinner Senhora Roybal took Thea and her three daughters away to one end of the parlor where they sat before the fire and giggled and gossiped, and mended a huge pile of torn linen with long, careless stitches. Senhora Roybal seemed to have no curiosity at all about these suddenly acquired cousins, and Thea was happy to smile, to stitch, and to listen to the low-voiced conversation in broken English, between Matlin and Roybal where they sat, across the room.
“I am ashamed, almost, to be Portuguese,” she heard Roybal say once. “We were so busy watching the Spanish, those imbeciles, suffer their stupid cuckold king and his Austrian wife and her lover, that sausage maker they made Prime Minister, all the time thinking ourselves fortunate with our Prince John. The old Queen is mad as a hatter, and the Princess little better, but our Prince, ah! a pious man and a man of sense who knew who his friends were. Then, to waver and waffle until the damned French were in our country and forced him to run away to Brazil.” Roybal spat into the fire.
“You’re a little hard on him: with Bonaparte’s troops on his border....”
Roybal would hear no good of Dom John. Thea listened, trying to understand a situation she had only vaguely heard of in Spain. Senhora Roybal, seeing her guest’s eye stray to the men at their wine, smiled and shook her head. “Such things they talk,” she said carefully, in Spanish, and rang for chocolate.
At last the smiles and polite nodding was done. Thea and Matlin were shown to a chamber which, naturally, their hosts expected them to share, but once inside the door Matlin indicated firmly that Thea would take the bed; he would sleep on the floor near the door. “You need not worry...” he began.
Thea cut him off with a cool, “I know.”
“Roybal has promised to take us to town in the morning. He knows of a man there with a barge, and if we sell the mules we can buy passage to Oporto and cut two days from our travelling time. Get some sleep.”
He turned his back to her to allow her some privacy. Thea shed her jacket and skirt and crawled into the delicious, if lumpy bed. After a while she heard Matlin’s deepening breath across the room and began to drift toward sleep herself. On the edge of consciousness a face appeared in her mind; she recognized it and sat bolt upright.
“Matlin,” she hissed. There was no reply. “Oh, for God’s sake.” Careless of her appearance she crawled out of bed and padded across the room to where her husband lay.
“Matlin!” She shook him and succeeded in getting from him a grumbled acknowledgement. “Wake up; please, you must.”
He rolled sleepily over onto his back and peered up at her, one of his hands moving gently to her chin. “What is it, sweetheart?” he murmured. Stung by the
momentary sweetness in his voice, Thea was almost unable to continue, but after a moment Matlin’s eyes cleared, and his hand dropped. “Forgive me,” he said. “What?”
“That man followed us here.” Aware that she was making little sense, Thea forced herself to start again, reminding him of the drunken farmer who had hovered so near them in the inn yard the night after they crossed the border. “He didn’t come in after us, so I supposed I was just being stupid, but, Matlin, I swear he was one of the men by the cookshed tonight.”
Matlin swore. “If you’re right, I must tell Roybal. He is to be trusted, but I couldn’t vouch for any of his men. Whatever happens, child, you stay here. Keep with the women; you should be safe enough.”
“You’re going out now?” She heard her voice go high with panic.
“Hadn’t I best find out what’s afoot now, rather than wait to see if we’re murdered in our beds? Get some sleep, Thea. Think of riding in style to Oporto tomorrow: I hope you’re a good sailor.” It was again the tone of an adult to a child. He turned his back as she went to bed, and left the room without another word.
Thea could not sleep. She lay on the mattress unmindful of the comfort, listening for sounds of trouble, wondering what had happened. Once, not far from her window, she heard men talking in rapid Portuguese. Each birdcall, the chirping of each cricket assumed sinister proportions. More than once, silently so as not to disturb the night, Thea prayed that Matlin would be safe.
Near dawn the doorlatch rattled and Thea sat up, biting her lip, afraid to scream and wanting very badly to do so. Matlin edged into the room without looking in her direction and tiptoed toward the heap of blankets he had left on the floor.
“Well?” she hissed.
“You should be asleep.”
“How could I be? What happened?”
“You were right.” In the darkness his smile was a white shadow. “We have you to thank, child. Evidently he thought I was some sort of representative of British intelligence.”
“But what happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Go to sleep. Roybal took care of him.” Thea shivered at the tone of his voice on those last words, and her curiosity flagged.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” she said very softly.
“Ehh? What?”
“Nothing. Go to sleep.” She turned over.
o0o
The next morning Roybal quietly greeted Thea as a heroine, the savior of his family and his home. He moved from fluid Portuguese to highly inventive, broken English and back again. Thea smiled at him and nodded, but her head hurt, and she felt tired and dizzy from so little sleep. She smiled again and again by way of thanks to Senhora Roybal as Matlin brought their bundles out of their room. Finally, after a breakfast of smiles and enthusiastic nods, Roybal took his guests to find his friend with the barge in Peso da Regua. He had offered to buy the mules himself, and Matlin’s pocket now held a few precious gold coins with which to buy their passage. Thea watched the three-cornered bargaining between her husband, the bargeman, and Roybal as interpreter, arguing loyally for both men. When at last Thea and Matlin climbed onto the barge, their bundles with them, he had two of his five gold pieces left.
The trip down the river took less than a full day; the currents were good, and the bargeman was familiar with the journey. Thea concentrated on the scenery, trying to distract herself from the mild discomfort in her stomach and the fierce pain in her head. She was achingly tired but unable to sleep and, when Matlin brought out their food that afternoon, she was unable to eat either. The bargeman offered Matlin wine, which he refused with a significant glance at Thea. He seemed a little kinder today, she thought hazily. Even without counting that “sweetheart” of the night before which had so deeply affected her, Thea thought the distance was a little less. Perhaps there was hope after all. She kept silent, still unsure of what to say or how to please him. It was enough for now that there was hope.
o0o
The sun had almost set when the bargeman docked in Oporto. Matlin left Thea in the charge of the bargeman and his wife, who met the boat at the dock, and went off to learn the news of ships in the harbor. There were soldiers everywhere, but Thea had worried so much that, now, curiously, she could not worry more. His Portuguese, at least, was little worse than his Spanish, which was more than Thea could say. While she sat with the bargeman’s wife in the shelter of a patio and watched crates being unloaded on the dock, Matlin reappeared, dirty and fatigued but with a grin of triumph.
“I’ve found us passage, a trifle unconventional. It’s a privateer from America that does a little, uhh, traffic in Exeter. For a price, which I had, and the promise of silence when we reach England, a promise which I was happy to make for both of us, the Captain was willing to take us on. We may have to go ashore in a rather rough and ready manner, you understand.”
“Smuggled in, I gather.” Thea said dryly.
“Scruples?”
“Me? I was just trying to clarify the situation.” She turned and made shift to thank the bargeman’s wife. Then she picked up her bundles and pronounced herself ready to go. One of the privateer’s crew would take them out to the ship in a dory, Matlin explained. By habit Thea fell in behind Matlin and thought as she did so that this would be the last time she needed to adopt that subservient, wifely manner.
By the time they reached the Lark Thea was thoroughly chilled and shivering. The Lark was a small, fast-looking boat; her fittings reflected the moonlight with a dull glow. Her captain was obviously anxious to sail as soon as possible. “The mate will show you your cabin, miss. I’d suggest, begging your pardon, that you stay there for the trip. The crew is made up of a good sort of lads, but a woman on board is what they ain’t used to.”
“I’ll undertake to see that she stays below, sir,” Matlin assured him, and he followed after as Thea was led to a tiny cubby that showed signs of rapid evacuation of the mate’s belongings.
“You’ll be all right? You look tired. You needn’t fear—I will be bedding down with the crew, so....”
Bitterness vied with exhaustion: Matlin was so determined to have nothing to do with her. It was best to show him she cared not in the least. “I want only one thing,” she croaked.
“What?”
“A basin. You asked yesterday if I was a good sailor? I’m not, I was wretched all day on that barge, and I don’t imagine I’ll be any better now.”
The look which crossed Matlin’s face was so comical a mixture of panic and concern that, once he had left the cabin, Thea laughed a little, until the ache in her head made her stop again.
Chapter Seven
Thea spent the endless week on the Lark in the mate’s cabin and was too miserable most of the time to do more than yearn for sleep. Her seasickness was compounded by influenza; reality and dreams had an uncomfortable way of confusing themselves. She hovered between feverish hallucination, nausea, and an endless, punishing thirst. Matlin attended her with the scant amenities of the Lark’s surgeon’s chest: lavender water sponged on her forehead and wrists, water with lemon and barley sugar. He was awkward enough as a nurse, but his patience would have surprised his wife had she been well enough to notice it. When the Lark anchored in a cove a few miles west of Highcliffe, Thea had recovered enough to register the fact that they would be put ashore at midnight, but she was still too tired to take much interest in the fact. It was Matlin who saw to their transportation, a dogcart belonging to one of the American captain’s contacts ashore. They made a trip of several miles through the chilly night air and arrived at last at an inn in Bournemouth. There she was aware of being carried up stairs and deposited on a bed that neither pitched nor smelled of stale straw, and she slept at once.
In the morning Matlin brought her breakfast to her. Thea had struggled up from the bed; she was wakened by the noise from the stableyard below her window, and sat, lightheaded but more comfortable than she had been in a week. “You’ll do,” Matlin pronounced after a brief inspection. “God k
nows you look better than you have in days. Eat your breakfast; as it is, my aunt will say I’ve been mistreating you, the way you look now.”
Obediently Thea started on the thick porridge in her bowl. It tasted wonderful, but she could only eat a few bites before she was full, and neither Matlin’s reproachful look nor her own common sense could make her eat more of the stuff.
“At least drink your milk, then. That’s the way.” He watched her approvingly and made Thea feel five years old again. “Now, do you think you can travel? I’m afraid I’ve run us shockingly into debt, and I’ve sold the last of my belongings for the price of a post chaise to London. We can take that this morning and be in London tonight. Or I can leave you here, hire a horse from someone, ride to London alone, and bring back my own carriage. We haven’t the blunt to stay another night here and to hire a chaise on the morrow.”
Her head ached, and she was suddenly, irrationally afraid of being left there. “Don’t leave me,” she cried quickly. It was an effort to smile after that and to assure him that she would be ready to travel in half an hour. All she wanted was to crawl back into the narrow bed and to lie there forever, but the thought of Matlin’s going, his leaving her there, was more than she could bear. “If you can give me just a little while to make myself presentable? I must look horrible.”
“If you can worry about that, you must be recovering. Half an hour, then...I’ll send for you.”
When the landlord’s daughter appeared, Thea had changed into the cleanest of her Spanish clothes, combed her dirty hair into a semblance of order. She hoped the worst tangles were covered by her shawl and washed her hands and face with the cold water that stood in the ewer by her bed. With a look of regret at the bed, she picked up the smallest of her bundles—the others held only scraps and filthy remnants of her other peasant dress, and she hoped never to see them again—and followed after the girl, down to the post chaise waiting in the courtyard. It was a shabby vehicle, the upholstery on the seats barely containing its stuffing, but Thea saw that someone, Matlin probably, had provided blankets and warm bricks, in an effort to make it comfortable.
Spanish Marriage Page 8
