by Carola Dunn
Isaac enfolded her in his arms. She leaned her head against his chest and took comfort from his quiet strength.
They heard the children’s voices outside and stepped apart. For a moment Miriam felt chilled and bereft. Then Sara appeared in the doorway and asked, wide-eyed, “Is Uncle Felix dead?”
“No, silly.” Aaron arrived behind her and gave her a push. “Uncle Joshua would have told us.”
“Hush, children.” Esther came in and embraced Miriam. “How is the poor young man? My dear, remember that my house is your house.”
Miriam hugged her. “I fear we shall need to take advantage of your kindness. I must go up and see that he is as comfortable as possible.”
She had scarcely set foot on the bottom stair when Hannah called.
“Miss Miriam, he’s waking up.”
She reached the bedside as he opened his eyes, hazy and unfocussed. He attempted to change his position and a groan rose to his lips. Miriam leaned over the bed and laid one gentle but firm hand on his left shoulder.
“Keep still, Felix. You are hurt.”
A travesty of a grin twisted his mouth. “I guessed as much,” he mumbled. “What happened?”
“You fell on the mountain. Isaac carried you back to the village. You have a dislocated shoulder and concussion, and I dare not give you enough laudanum to make you sleep, though you can have a few drops to dull the pain.”
“Not yet. Must discuss... Where is Isaac?”
“Tomorrow will be time enough for discussions.”
“Today. Wellington’s gold....” He closed his eyes, a tiny wrinkle of pain between his fair brows, but when she began to move he gripped her hand. “Today.”
“Hannah, ask Isaac to come up, please.”
Meeting Isaac at the door, she said in a low voice, “He will not rest easy until we have made plans. Do not argue with him now, I beg of you.”
He nodded, frowning, and stepped forward to stand by the bed. Felix opened his eyes, clearer now.
“I’m sick as a dog, old fellow. You’ll have to go on without me. Good people here...take care of me.”
“I fear you are right, we cannot afford to waste any more time. We ought to leave tomorrow. You will be safe here until we return.”
“Never thought...trust you with all that gold. Now...trust you with my life.” He raised his left hand and Isaac grasped it. “No good way to say thank you, is there?”
“We’ll take it as said. You must rest now.”
Felix’s arm dropped back onto the quilt and his eyes closed again, his face turning slightly green. “Gad, ...feel devilish.”
“Isaac, tell Hannah to bring the sal volatile and the laudanum,” Miriam ordered. “Felix, are you going to cast up your accounts?”
“Don’t think so. Touch and go for a moment.”
“Well, for pity’s sake don’t be too bashful to give us warning.”
He managed a crooked smile. “Never been called bashful before.”
Like a docile child he swallowed his medicine. Hannah stayed with him, and Miriam went down to talk to Isaac. There was one thing she had to make perfectly clear and she wasn’t sure how he was going to take it. She didn’t want an audience, so she suggested stepping outside for a breath of fresh air.
They stood side by side, leaning on a gate, watching the carriage horses grazing among a half dozen sheep and a long-eared mule. The sun was warm; above a belt of dark green pines on the far side of the meadow, the snow gleamed blinding white on the rampart of peaks ranging east and west into the distance. Overhead a vulture circled lazily, black against the pale blue sky.
Miriam laced her fingers together. She was not wearing gloves, and despite the sun her hands were cold. Or was the cold internal?
“Isaac, I cannot go with you. I must stay to nurse Felix.”
He stiffened and for a moment was perfectly still. Then he said in a voice of calm deliberation, “Esther, Joshua, the others will look after him.”
“He needs more expert care than they can give. If his shoulder is not treated correctly, it could develop permanent stiffness. Nor can I be sure as yet how serious the head injury is. I cannot leave him.”
“But I....”
“We shall find a Basque guide. You would have to have someone to help you drive in any case. Isaac, you are perfectly capable of reaching Pamplona on your own, even of finding General Wellington, wherever he may be. Felix was forced on you by the British Government; I was forced on you by Jakob Rothschild. You never really needed either of us.”
“No!” The word could have been agreement, but it sounded more like a cry of despair.
Miriam continued quickly, before her voice broke. “Nathan Rothschild entrusted this mission to you, and it is vital to England. You must go on. I must stay.”
The two French border guards, huddled in their stone hut atop the Col du Pourtalet, were quite satisfied with Petye Uriarte’s tale, backed as it was by two bottles of Felix’s cognac. It was none of their business if some mad Spanish grandee wanted to purchase a rather shabby berline in France and hire a couple of men to drive it home for him. They shrugged, raised the bottles in salute, and waved the driver on before hurrying back to the comparative comfort of their meagre fire.
Isaac had little leisure to contemplate the success of his ploy. Whether he was driving or perched behind wielding the skid pan and safety chain, the road demanded all his attention. He was glad of the occupation--it kept his mind from Miriam.
The track zigzagged down the mountain, usually with a precipice on one side, sometimes on both sides, falling sheer to ravening torrents hundreds of feet below. In places the track itself turned into a stream; in others, rock falls necessitated terrifying detours. Fortunately Petye, though he had never before driven anything but a donkey cart, took to the reins like a scion of the English nobility.
A small, dark, round-faced Basque in his early twenties, who sang as he drove, he had been suggested as a guide by Aaron Abravanel.
“The grown-ups won’t talk about it,” the boy told Isaac, “but everyone knows Petye’s a smuggler, and he wants to join the guerrilleros in Spain.”
“Guerilleros?”
“They are bands of men fighting the emperor’s army, not proper soldiers with uniforms just people who hate Bonaparte. He tries to make the Basques obey his laws when they have perfectly good laws of their own, like us Jews. Can I come with you too?”
Aaron, disappointed, was left behind, but Petye had eagerly agreed to guide Isaac to Pamplona. Though his native language was Basque, he claimed to speak Spanish almost as well as he did French. And when Isaac refused to explain why he insisted on taking an apparently empty carriage rather than a much faster mule, instead of asking awkward questions Petye slyly winked. Isaac was glad to have him.
They came down safely out of the high mountains, spent the second night at Sabiñánigo, and in the morning turned westward. Though the road was still bad enough to require the driver’s concentration, the brakes were only needed occasionally. Isaac’s thoughts flew back across the Pyrenees to the village of St.-Jean-d’Ossau.
Miriam believed in his competence; her faith in him was a flame that burned steadily in his heart. He clung to the memory of her slender figure beside him in the sunshine, the warm suppleness in his arms... no, he must not think of that. She had chosen to stay with Felix.
How would she have finished that sentence: “Felix is so....”? So vigorous, so full of life? So handsome? So--virile?
The possibility tortured him. For all her unfeminine decisiveness, Miriam was utterly female, and women had their physical needs as much as men. Under Jewish law, a husband was expected to provide his wife with sexual gratification. He had never supposed that Miriam’s response to his embrace, and to Felix’s, meant that she was a shameless slut, but that she needed a husband. That was, after all, one reason why early marriage was a Jewish custom.
Her family had proposed an early marriage for her. She had rejected it--rejected him-
-out of hand. Did she now want Felix? He could not forget that she had torn herself angrily from his kisses whereas only his interruption had ended Felix’s caress.
And now she had chosen to stay with Felix. She loved Felix.
Isaac wondered whether she realized how unlikely it was that the heir to an earldom should take for his bride the daughter of a Jewish Cit, however wealthy, even if he loved her. If he offered for her hand, his family would fight the marriage tooth and nail. Apart from other considerations, the Roworths blamed a Jew for their ruin, though Felix seemed to have overcome his prejudice to some extent.
To the extent that he would propose to Miriam? And if he did not, and Isaac proposed, would she accept him despite loving Felix? Or would she once again reject him?
He shuddered at the thought.
By the time he and Petye reached Pamplona, Isaac had almost succeeded in convincing himself that as a rational person he could not possibly have fallen in love in a week.
They drove through the gate into the ancient city on the ninth of April, the first night of Passover. Petye wouldn’t have cared if he had known, but Isaac regretted being unable to celebrate the festival. The best he could do was to avoid leavened bread when he treated Petye to a superb meal at the inn where they stopped. He had come to like and respect the cheerful, willing Basque.
Petye had family and friends in Pamplona but he agreed to stay with Isaac until he had made contact with Kalmann Rothschild. If Kalmann failed to turn up, Isaac hoped Petye’s guerrillero contacts might help him smuggle the gold to Lord Wellington, always supposing they knew where Lord Wellington was to be found. One way or another he had to deliver the gold. Miriam expected no less.
Next day he walked to the cathedral square well before noon, anxiously scanning the faces of the passers-by though he knew he would recognize Kalmann from a distance.
The chimes of the cathedral clock rang out over the city, and there was the young Rothschild crossing the square, his high-crowned, narrow-brimmed silk hat conspicuous among the Basque berets. As he caught sight of Isaac striding towards him, his plump, face took on an expression of surprise and-- embarrassment? However, he shook Isaac’s hand heartily.
“You made good time,” he said in Yiddish. “You had no trouble on the way?”
They strolled on through the town as Isaac gave a brief description of the various trials and tribulations of the journey. Kalmann seemed relieved when he learned that Felix and Miriam had been left behind. Isaac began to be puzzled.
“When did you arrive in Pamplona?” he asked. “Have you already made arrangements for transporting the gold from here onward? I assume it will have to be transferred from the berline to a mule train.”
“The situation is somewhat complicated,” Kalmann evaded.
“But we cannot drive the berline across the French lines!”
“No, no, the berline has served its purpose. To tell the truth, Jakob was far from sure that you would reach Pamplona.”
Isaac halted, grasping Kalmann’s arm. Something was definitely amiss. “What do you mean? You expected to lose the gold?”
Kalmann glanced around. A row of ancient houses faced the city walls across a narrow cobbled street. No one else was in sight, or in earshot. “The only gold in the berline is there to deceive the English lord,” he revealed. “Most of the weight is lead. It is best if you do not tell the English lord. His government does not need to know our methods.”
Staring at his bland face, Isaac felt his neck muscles tense in the effort not to shout. “You Rothschilds stole the gold?” he demanded through gritted teeth. “You used Miriam and me to keep Felix happy while you covered your tracks?”
“God forbid! Trust is our greatest asset; why would we steal from the British Government? No, Jakob took the gold from Nathan to banks in Paris and exchanged it for notes on banks in Barcelona and Zaragoza. I brought the notes to Spain and exchanged them for gold. Both cities resisted the French invaders and the people hate them, so it was not difficult to persuade even the suspicious to cooperate in transporting the gold to Pamplona.”
“Then what... We were decoys.” As the realization struck, Isaac began to shake with anger, his voice rising. “You intended the French to follow us, to arrest us even, to divert suspicion from what was really going on!”
“We had every expectation of being able to buy your freedom if you were caught.”
“And in the meantime? That you should endanger Miriam for nothing, risk her being confined to prison--and worse--merely to distract attention from your trail!”
“Hush.” The street was no longer empty. Kalmann jerked his head towards an interested old man and a pair of giggling girls who had stopped to watch the altercation. “We had best move on before someone wonders what language we are speaking.”
He started walking and Isaac perforce fell in beside him. Fury seethed within him, remembering the lascivious army captain at Blois, the dungeons of Bordeaux, the cold, cruel eyes of the prefect. He had hated Miriam’s involvement even when he thought it was in a good cause.
“I would not have sent a woman,” Kalmann said. “Jakob hoped it would lessen the danger, both by making your travels appear more natural and because of Miss Jacobson’s languages and experience. Was she not of assistance to you?”
Isaac’s laugh was harsh. “As I told you, without her we’d still be imprisoned in Bordeaux. She saved our skins, at grave risk of her own! And that was not the only time. We’d not have gone far without her,” he admitted grudgingly.
As if his admission closed the subject, Kalmann turned to business. He had discovered, roughly, Wellington’s whereabouts, hired mules, and arranged for an escort of Basque guerrilleros. Assuming that the guerrilleros hated the French more than they loved gold, another fortnight or so should see the mission completed.
They rode out of Pamplona before dawn the next day. Travelling mostly by tortuous goat tracks, often invisible to anyone but their guide, they rode southwest through bare, bleak, stony mountains towards the Portuguese border. Sometimes they saw clouds of dust on the plateau far below, where the road from the French border carried troops to the French army headquarters at Salamanca. Sometimes they detoured around towns or fortresses held by the French. Always either Isaac or Kalmann was on guard at night, keeping watch over Wellington’s gold.
During Isaac’s brief hours of restless sleep, wrapped in a blanket on the hard, cold ground, he dreamed of Miriam--or of Miriam and Felix. Waking, he had to acknowledge it was just as well she was not on this leg of the journey. Once again his anger at Jakob for involving her flared.
One day a scout returned to announce that he had met with a band of Spanish guerrilleros. Wellington’s army was encamped at the village of Fuentes de Oñoro, right on the Portuguese border, some fifteen miles west of the French stronghold at Ciudad Rodrigo. But El Aguila, the Eagle as the Spanish called Wellington, had ridden south to inspect General Beresford’s army at Badajoz.
Masséna was expected to try at any moment to relieve the starving French garrison at Almeida, the last outpost on Portuguese ground. A battle was imminent and General Lord Wellington was elsewhere.
A battle! Kalmann decided discretion was the better part of valour: no sense risking the gold falling into French hands after bringing it all this way. Isaac argued that in the confusion after a battle handing over the gold to the British might prove difficult, dangerous, or impossible.
The matter was settled by the guerrilleros. Honour demanded that they seize the chance to come to blows with the French. The mule train picked its way down from the Sierra de Gata and plodded towards Fuentes de Oñoro.
The sentry gaped when a rumpled, grimy, unshaven Englishman stepped forward to answer his challenge. He’d heard Nosey had just ridden in from Badajoz, a rumour that was confirmed as Isaac and his ruffianly crew were passed from hand to hand. At last a young lieutenant led Isaac and Kalmann across a boulder-strewn stream and into the hillside village, a tiered labyrinth of one-stor
y stone cottages, walled vegetable patches, and narrow, twisting alleys.
“The Beau’s quartered near the top,” he said. “His lookout post is up there by those slabs of rock, near the church. He’s a busy man so I hope you have something of importance to tell him.”
“I am quite certain his lordship will be pleased to hear my news,” Isaac assured him dryly.
Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington of Talavera and Wellington, and Baron Douro of Welleslie, radiated energy. His light blue eyes, brown hair, and hooked nose were unremarkable but his presence filled the tiny room. He scanned the letters from the Treasury and from Nathan Rothschild and tossed them on the battered table that served him as a desk.
“Mr. Cohen, Herr Rothschild, you have brought the gold? Splendid.” He fired some rapid orders at his staff then turned back to the visitors and shook their hands. “You have my most sincere thanks, gentlemen. Ned here will see you get your receipts all right and tight. Now if you will excuse me, I have a battle to prepare for.”
The two things Isaac wanted most in the world at that moment were a bath and a bed. Ned Pakenham, the general’s adjutant and brother-in-law, found him both. He also provided receipts-- three copies, for Jakob, Nathan, and the Treasury,--horses, and a guide.
Neither Isaac nor Kalmann had any desire to linger. The next morning they started back towards the Pyrenees. Towards Miriam--and Felix.
Chapter 20
As Miriam watched the berline climbing through a golden dawn towards the pass, she felt as if she were being torn in two. Felix needed her, Isaac didn’t, but how she wished she had not been forced to choose between them.
The carriage disappeared around a bend. “Fare well,” she whispered. No mere conventional phrase, it was a fervent prayer for Isaac’s success and, above all, his safety and his return.
She went back into the house. Hannah had spent the night at the Cresques’ and would soon arrive to take over in the sick room. Felix had slept, albeit restlessly with pain and laudanum fighting for supremacy. When Miriam had left him to see Isaac on his way, he had been showing signs of rousing. She was anxious to determine the extent of his concussion.
