The Sometime Bride

by Blair Bancroft

  There were perhaps thirty dragoons and mamelukes lying dead in the plaza. The remainder of Napoleon’s guards had disappeared, evidently retreating to safer ground. Thirty enemy dead, yet the plaza was littered with bodies. Bodies which crushed the flower beds, stained the fountain pool red with blood. Bodies draped over the sides of the coaches which had been rocked until they lay tilted at crazy angles. The horses, useless, had been cut loose from their traces. These coaches would not set out for France today. Because hundreds of Spaniards had died to keep them here.

  Why he himself was still alive, Blas could only wonder.

  The battle was won. The day was won. The night to come and the days to follow would be another story. A terrible tale of retaliation and terror. But this day, like the independence day of the American colonies, would go down in Spanish history by a simple date. Dos de mayo. The second of May.

  “I got the hell out,” said Blas ten days later in Lisbon. “There wasn’t a prayer the revolution could last. Murat had an army just outside the city. By nightfall they were lining up people against walls and executing them or simply shooting anything in the streets that moved. There were bodies everywhere . . . “

  Blas caught himself and paused. There was no need to fill Cat’s head with the horror of massacres and dismembered bodies. He managed a rueful grin. “Scarcely a triumphal beginning to a rebellion, but a beginning nonetheless. On my way back, I saw evidence of uprisings everywhere. I suppose I should not gloat over terrorism, but to see people defy Boney at long last . . . Ah, Cat, it was a marvelous sight!”

  That night Blas came to her room. Sheepishly, he told her about his fleeting thought in the midst of the Plaza de Oriente. If I get myself killed in Madrid, Cat will kill me. Cat did not find it amusing. She threw herself against his chest and clung to him as if he were her only hold on life. Blas wondered at the certainty of his feelings. She was his, this child of not yet fifteen years. His wife. His woman. When he left her, much later that night, she was still a virgin, though he could have sworn the effort cost him five years off his life.

  The Spaniards at the Plaza de Oriente had not died in vain. Massive guerrilla uprisings in every province of Spain prodded the British into action at last. In July, shortly after Catarina’s fifteenth birthday, Sir Arthur Wellesley landed in the bay of the Mondego, north of Lisbon, with a small force of thirteen thousand men which was soon swelled by the addition of five thousand Portuguese troops. Together, the allies started their march toward Lisbon.

  Catarina was beside herself, dancing around the private family salon of the Casa Audley, clapping her hands in an irrepressible expression of joy.” Estupendo! Magnifico! Maravilhoso! Is it really, really true, Blas? The British are coming at last? We will be free! And Papa will come home.”

  Blas, draped over the sofa with one booted leg thrust nonchalantly out in front of him, offered little support for her raptures. “We are fortunate the riots forced Junot to send some of his troops to Madrid and that those left in Portugal are a far cry from France’s finest. Wellesley may win through to Lisbon this time, but Boney isn’t going to let such a prize go lightly. As I’ve told you, it’s going to be a long war.”

  Cat suddenly stopped her twirling and stared at him. During these many tumultuous months, an item of importance had escaped her attention. “It is nearly one year since you came to us, Blas. I am now fifteen, but never have you said that you had a birthday.”

  “I don’t have birthdays . . . I just grow older.”

  “Estúpido!” She stood glaring down at him, arms akimbo. “You will tell me. When was your birthday?”

  He leaned back against the sofa, locking his hands behind his head. “I’m not going to tell you, you know.”

  “Why?” she demanded, scowling fiercely.

  “Because that was a condition of my employment, as you very well know since you were listening so avidly at the knothole. No personal questions, remember?”

  “Your birthdate is not that personal.” And you are, after all, my husband.”

  “There are other things you should be considering,” Blas offered in a blatant attempt to change the subject. “Things will be different when your father comes back.” And he was quite sure he was not going to like it. A wise man might welcome more conventional chaperonage as Catarina grew older. Blas did not.

  “Oh.” Catarina considered the problem, her face registering a variety of conflicting emotions. “Do we become unmarried?” she asked at last.

  “That’s just it, I don’t think we can. Half of Lisbon knows us as a couple, and marriage is for life. It is also very likely the French will be back. They have well over a hundred thousand men in Spain. I doubt they will leave us in peace.”

  Cat, who had heard little beyond marriage is for life, said, “Then you must have Dona Felipa’s old room next to mine. There is no connecting door, but it will do.”

  He doubted it. Thomas Audley would probably post a guard on the upper gallery. Blas had been faithful to his promise, but he had grown accustomed to having his Cat close at hand, secure in the knowledge she was within easy reach. To return to life as it had been before his “paper” marriage was nearly unthinkable.

  Blas sat up with a jolt, his arms falling to his sides. When Thomas came back to the Casa Audley, by the letter—if not the spirit—of their agreement he was released from his promise to protect Cat’s virginity. There had never been any mention of a time beyond the French occupation. Not a little ashamed by the wave of sensual excitement which flooded his far-from-deprived body, Blas murmured something about seeing Cat later that evening in the gaming rooms. And fled the house.

  Chapter Seven

  “Such stupidity is not possible!” Marcio Cardoso, hands clenched at his sides, spit the words into the air. “This cannot be. The British would not do such a thing!”

  “Obviously, inbreeding affects the upper echelons of the British army as well as our monarchs,” Blas murmured in disgust. He and Cat sat slumped in their chairs in Thomas’s study, each dejected face a mirror of the other. Marcio Cardoso leaned against the carved mantel while his father paced the floor.

  “But your Wellesley won!” Lucio spat out. “Junot lost. His army must be made prisoner, yes? Not sent back to the Emperor!”

  “On British ships,” Cat moaned, shaking her head.

  “Is there nothing General Wellesley can do?” Marcio demanded.

  Blas unclenched his jaw, searching for words that might make sense out of insanity. Words that could explain the Treaty of Sintra to men—friends—whose country had just been betrayed. Blas, as glib as he was, found he could not explain the inexplicable, excuse the inexcusable.

  “Wellesley is outranked by the armchair generals who showed up after the battle was safely over,” Blas told his companions. “If Britain honors the Treaty of Sintra, I think Wellesley will resign and go back to his job as Irish Secretary. His response to such idiocy, such an insult, can be nothing less.”

  “But without him we will again be defenseless,” Cat cried. “These other generals are fools!”

  “Sir John Moore knows what he’s doing,” Blas assured her. “Perhaps Dalrymple and Burrard will be happy to stand aside and let him get on with it. But you are right . . . Wellesley is one of the few generals in the world who can say he won a battle, however minor, against the French. He would be a sad loss.”

  A loud pounding resounded on the study door. Miguel, the young courier who carried messages between the Casa and Thomas Audley at the Dominguez winery, burst into the room. His eyes were wild, his face haggard and streaked with soot. “Don Alexis, Dona Catarina, there is very bad trouble!” The young man’s eyes focused on Catarina. “Last night,” he gasped, “French soldiers on their way to the British ships in Lisbon. They wanted wine, revenge . . . who can tell? They demanded casks from the winery and were granted them most graciously by Don Alvaro, but they drank and kept on drinking. And when it was dark, they built a fire of any wood they could find . . . and kept o
n drinking.”

  Blas rose and stood behind Cat’s chair, his hand firm against her shoulder, giving her his strength. Whatever the courier was trying to say, the news was not good.

  “When the casks ran out,” the courier continued, “they attacked the cave where the wine is stored. They set fire to the great wooden doors. Don Alvaro ran out to join the workers who were defending it. They killed him. And your father—when he tried to save Don Alvaro—they beat him until we all thought he must be dead. But he lives. Dona Blanca has sent me to bring you to him.” The young man’s face crumpled in despair. “A thousand pardons, Dona Catarina, for bringing such terrible news.”

  Blas’s hand tightened on Cat’s shoulder as she stifled a moan. Even as he felt her pain, and his own, his mind was already flying, reassessing his plans, speculating on the possible disintegration of Thomas Audley’s Iberian intelligence organization.

  Marcio found his voice first. “And these are the monsters they will put aboard British ships and send back to the little Corsican to commit atrocities all over again!”

  “Marcio, see that Miguel gets food and rest.” Blas’s orders were brisk. There was no time for anger, nor even sympathy. “Pack what you will need, Cat. We’ll leave as soon as you are ready.”

  Thirty miles of fear and hate. Queluz. Sintra. The coastal plain. Once again, Cat ignored the most beautiful scenery in Portugal, seeing only the long columns of blue coats marching toward Lisbon. Twenty-five thousand Frenchmen on the move toward British ships which would graciously convey them back to France.

  Waves of hatred burned. These were no longer the young men she had found so congenial, so flattering at the Casa. They were beasts, spawn of the devil, Napoleon. If she summoned enough hatred, perhaps she could shut out the anguish which threatened to engulf her.

  Miguel had not reported the full extent of the destruction at the Dominguez winery. At least a third of the beautiful home of Alvaro and Blanca Dominguez was a blackened ruin, the roof fallen through to the cellars below. The outbuildings were little more than smoking ruins. In the distance, hard against the rise of a hill, charcoaled streaks of black scarred the great doors to the wine cave.

  “May the ships sink and take them all to hell,” Cat hissed.

  Grimly, Blas took Cat’s arm and steered her toward the servant who had come to guide them around the blackened ruins and into the undamaged portion of the house.

  Although the smell of smoke permeated the room where Thomas Audley lay, the ornate furnishings were untouched by fire. Cat scarcely noticed the other two people in the room as she stared at her father’s motionless body. Dona Blanca sat on one side of the bed, a brown-robed monk on the other, but Cat saw only Thomas. Her beloved Papa. Pale, lifeless, his radiant vitality extinguished as if by some evil spell. His patrician nose was blue-black, bent out of shape, his eyes swollen shut. Full lips drooped, dotted with dark streaks of dried blood. With an added rush of horror, Cat realized the rest of him must be similarly battered.

  “He will live, Catarina. I promise you he will live.” Dona Blanca, who had been sponging Thomas’s forehead and wrists with cool aromatic water, paused long enough to reassure her young friend. A handsome dark-eyed matron of some thirty years, Dona Blanca Dominguez had not been blessed with children. In her quiet, unobtrusive way she had thoroughly enjoyed the days she and young Catarina had spent together while they awaited the outcome of the French occupation of Lisbon.

  Hastily, Cat recalled her manners. She embraced Dona Blanca, murmuring condolences and thanks in an emotional jumble of words which neither woman found odd. As Cat’s babbling ceased and their conversation became more coherent, she began to sense something beneath the surface of their reunion. Something beyond Dona Blanca’s grief. With an instinct born of emerging womanhood, Cat began to suspect the death of Alvaro Dominguez and the beating of Thomas Audley were not the only wounds suffered by Blanca Dominguez.

  As the women spoke in low tones, Blas got his own report on Thomas’s condition from the monk, Brother Miguel. After paying his respects to Dona Blanca, whose calm good nature he had grown to admire during his frequent visits to Thomas Audley, Blas once again took his wife’s arm. “Before Dona Blanca explains how you may help, Cat, I should like to speak with you. Come outside a moment.”

  “He is going to die!” Cat wailed as the door closed behind them.

  “No,” Blas declared flatly. “Dona Blanca did not lie. Brother Basilio is the most experienced doctor available. I have seen his work before, and I would trust him over any other I have seen in Portugal . . . and most of England as well. He tells me that Thomas will live. But . . . “

  Cat swallowed hard, her unwavering gaze never leaving Blas’s face.

  “But Thomas may never be as strong as he once was,” Blas continued gently. “There may be internal injuries . . . possible head injuries. It is too soon to know. It is foolish to tell you to be brave, for you have been nothing else in all the time I have known you. But you must smile when you look at him. Think only of the time you have been granted and not of what may be lost.” Blas’s voice turned brisk as he registered the pallor of Cat’s skin, the blank shock in the depths of her green eyes. “Go to him, cara. Do what Dona Blanca tells you. I will sit with him tonight, but now I must assess the damage here and see what I can do.”

  Blas, concentrating on Catarina and her pain, gave no indication of the burden which had just fallen on his young shoulders. There was no one else who had the knowledge, skill, and gift of command needed to run Thomas Audley’s spy network.

  But Cat knew. Inwardly, she sighed. Always it would be like this. Blas doing what must be done, no matter how strong the personal demands on his time. So she would endure because she must. As Dona Blanca was doing. Dona Blanca! Cat grabbed Blas’s sleeve as he started to turn away.

  “Blas? I do not know what to say to Dona Blanca. I have no words. She has lost her husband, her care of Papa has saved his life. But I think—I am not sure—but I think more happened here, things no one will speak of. I must not ignore it, but I do not know what to say.”

  “Dear God, Cat, I wish I knew.” Blas groaned. Hell and the devil! Was there no end to this disaster? At twenty-two he had thought himself immortal. Until he saw his mentor’s nearly lifeless body, shrunken from vivid color to pale nothingness. And now . . . what Cat was trying to tell him was far beyond his experience. “You might ask Dona Blanca if she has spoken to Brother Basilio,” he ventured. “He strikes me as a man who is able to understand the darker side of this world.

  “And, Cat,” he added, suddenly recalling their conversation in Lisbon at the beginning of the occupation. “Tell Dona Blanca what Thomas and I told you. About survival. If you had been here with those French beasts, and I rushed back to find you nobly dead by your own hand, it would have been the end of my life as well as yours. How could such a senseless sacrifice benefit God or man?”

  Wordlessly, she stared at him. Was it possible Blas truly loved her? Certainly, she had never loved him more. In the midst of tragedy she had found a shining gem of hope. Cat stood on tiptoe, kissed him lightly on the mouth.

  Neither recognized the moment for what it was. The last emotional intimacy they would share for months to come.

  A pall of pain, as thick as the permeating stench of charcoaled timbers, clung to the occupants of the Casa Dominguez. Thomas Audley’s quick mind made a rapid recovery, but his body was slow to follow. In the first days after the disaster at the winery his three devoted attendants submerged their own problems in the demanding routine of his care. By the fifth day of his confinement Thomas was recovered enough to confirm what they already suspected. Blas the Bastard must take over Thomas’s far-flung intelligence network. Blas, who had had time to come to terms with his new responsibility, was eager to comply, obeying a whisper from Thomas Audley far more readily than he had ever obeyed a roar from his father.

  As much as he exalted in his new power, a cloud dimmed his excitement. He was going to have
very little time for his young bride. Perhaps no time at all. Which was probably a good thing, considering the thoughts which continually insinuated themselves into his mind. And, besides, Cat would be busy with Thomas, and had Dona Blanca to watch over her. So no need to suffer guilt. They were, after all, at war, and wars took precedence over personal considerations. Of that, he had no doubt.

  Blas was off to Lisbon within the hour, leaving Cat and Dona Blanca to stare after the cloud of dust diminishing in the distance.

  During the first nightmare days after Thomas was injured, there had been little time for conversation. Catarina, Blas, and Dona Blanca had taken turns caring for Thomas with no thought beyond how to keep his feverish tossing from injuring him still further or what medicinal drafts, foods, and soothing herbal washes might give their patient ease.

  With Dona Blanca totally absorbed in Thomas’s needs, Cat was relieved of the terrible urgency of her fears for Blanca’s life. And her soul as well. For Cat was confident Blanca Dominguez would never willingly leave this world while Thomas Audley needed her. But on the morning after Blas’s departure, as Catarina gathered her courage to face another day, she wondered if she was fooling herself. Was she creating a fantasy to excuse her own cowardice, her failure to ask Dona Blanca what had happened that night? And yet, Cat reminded herself, Blanca Dominguez was twice her age, mistress of the house in which they were living. How could a girl of fifteen years initiate a conversation of such adult immensity?

  But now, with Blas gone and Thomas well enough to begin issuing orders, life was becoming more normal. Servants were allowed to assist with the invalid’s care, particularly the chore of sitting with him while he slept. On the first night of their new freedom Catarina and Blanca shared the luxury of a formal meal in the dining room before withdrawing to the elegant vastness of the salon.