by Carla Kelly
‘I am in your debt,’ Hugh replied simply.
‘I can promise you nothing.’
‘I know that.’
Most of São Jobim was blazing when the Dragoons mounted the horses that had been stabled inside the town hall. Two of the lighter men doubled up and the Sergeant directed Hugh to mount the other horse. He tied Hugh’s hands together, then tied Polly’s, only not so tight. To Hugh’s amusement, Cadotte directed a man to hand her up carefully to sit in front of him. She tried to sit sideways at first, as though she rode a sidesaddle, but gave that up quickly and threw her leg over the saddle, which raised her skirts to her knees. To her credit, Polly scarcely seemed to mind. Directing her to lean forwards, Hugh raised his roped arms and lowered them over her body, resting them against her stomach. The Corporal took the reins and led the horse behind his own.
Polly was still shaking and there was nothing he could do about that. After what seemed like an hour of travel on what was a little-used track, he felt her shoulders lower as her jangled nerves attempted to relax. She said nothing, though, which suited him well enough, since he couldn’t think of any words to comfort her. Just as well. Unaccustomed to riding horseback, Hugh felt his inner thighs begin to burn and his buttocks go numb.
After several hours of steady climbing, Sergeant Cadotte raised his hand and the Dragoons stopped. Everyone knew what to do. In another moment, all the men were urinating into the road.
‘My blushes,’ Polly said, the first words she had spoken since leaving São Jobim.
Hugh chuckled. ‘Boys will be boys,’ he told her. ‘I hope Cadotte will take a little pity on us, too.’
He did. When the men were standing by their mounts again and eating what looked like hardtack, Sergeant Cadotte sent a trooper to help Polly off the horse. He untied her hands and helped her down, then indicated that Hugh should throw his leg over the saddle and slide off.
‘I can’t,’ Hugh said, looking at Cadotte. ‘Sergeant, you’ll have to appreciate that I am a Royal Marine and not a horseman of any kind. Undo my hands, please, and I will struggle off and probably fall on my face, to your total amusement.’
Cadotte laughed and told the Private to untie his hands, but was kind enough to steady Hugh as he dismounted. He sank immediately to his knees. All the men in the troop laughed, but Hugh only shrugged and staggered to his feet.
‘You meant what you said,’ Cadotte murmured. ‘Take your wife and go relieve yourselves.’
‘Merci,’ Hugh said with a grimace. ‘Just let me stand here a moment and see if there is any blood in my pathetic body willing to circulate to my ass again.’
‘But he is never seasick,’ Polly said suddenly in French, which made the men laugh again.
In good humour, Cadotte gestured to the stand of trees. ‘Have a little privacy, Colonel. That ought to be worth the price of a few cows at my farm by Angoulême.’
‘A whole herd,’ Hugh said as he took Polly by the hand. ‘Come, my love, and let us find a tree.’
To his relief, the Dragoons turned away and squatted on the far side of their horses, some smoking and others conversing. Wincing at every step, Hugh led Polly into the stand of trees. ‘Well, my dear, turn your head and give me a moment.’
Her face bright red, she did as he said. When he finished and buttoned his trousers, he pointed towards a fallen log. ‘It’s the best we can do, Brandon,’ he said, and turned around to face the Dragoons on the road while she took care of her own business.
‘You needn’t stand so close,’ she scolded, when she had finished and joined him.
‘Au contraire, ma chérie, I’m going to stick to you like a medicinal plaster. If you have any inhibitions about that, I suggest you abandon them right here.’
He watched her expressive face, still red, as she considered his words, then nodded. ‘Consider them abandoned, Colonel—’
‘No. No. “Hugh, my love”,’ he teased.
‘Hugh, my love, you’re trying me,’ she shot back, which made him smile and took the lump of fear out of his stomach for the first time.
He draped his arm across her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. ‘Adventures never are as much fun as bad novels make them out to be, Polly.’
‘I can see that,’ she said, as she tucked her fingers in his swordless belt. ‘Just don’t think for a minute you are going to take advantage of me!’
He kissed her temple and whispered in her ear, ‘I already did, Polly. You’re going to be a mother, remember?’
‘How could I forget such an immaculate conception? I defy even the Pope to be more surprised than I.’
They laughed together, which made Sergeant Cadotte turn around in surprise. With a scowl, he motioned them closer to retie their hands and continue the journey.
They travelled off the beaten track until they came to a deserted village just at sunset. The casual way the Dragoons rode into the abandoned town told Hugh volumes. ‘I think this must be where they bivouacked on the journey to São Jobim,’ he whispered to Polly. ‘Look how familiar they are with it. They knew it was deserted.’
He could feel Polly sigh against his chest. ‘We might have been travelling on the moon,’ she whispered back. ‘This poor country. Does no one live in the interior any more?’
‘Precious few, I gather. Only think how many armies have picked it clean, like a flock of vultures dining on one thin rabbit.’
Hugh put his head closer to hers to keep his voice low, but also because he could not deny the comfort he derived from her presence. ‘I can’t help but think this patrol of Dragoons was a forlorn hope.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He could see Sergeant Cadotte watching them. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
With help, they dismounted for the first time since the afternoon, with the same results. In agony, he leaned against Polly, who held him up, then kissed his cheek. ‘You Marines are pretty worthless on horseback,’ she chided.
‘Aye, aye, wife. Just wait until you’re back on a ship.’
He wanted her to laugh, but tears came to her eyes. ‘Hugh, it couldn’t be a moment too soon, even if I vomit from Oporto to Plymouth,’ she whispered, her face turned into his chest. All he could do was hold her and silently agree, with all the longing of his deepwater heart.
Expertly, the Dragoons took their mounts into the half-burned church while Hugh and Polly stood in the square, then gradually edged over to a bench, where he spent a long moment trying to decide if sitting down again was worse than standing. He sat down gingerly, grateful at least that the bench wasn’t going anywhere.
The evening meal—eaten in a barren interior courtyard—continued to confirm his suspicions about the nature of the French army in Portugal. He knew how fond Napoleon was of exhorting his soldiers to live off the land, but the Peninsula was frail and bare. Dinner was a stew of French hardtack soaked in a broth of wild onions and nothing more, washed down, at least, with excellent port someone must have pilfered from farther downriver. The men were already on starvation rations.
They sat close together in the cool evening air that was beginning to feel like autumn. Rains would come soon enough, spreading enough discomfort around to last a lifetime, if they were still prisoners on the trail. Or we could be dead, my lady and me, he reminded himself. It was better not to borrow trouble from tomorrow.
His thoughts were unprofitable, so it was with some relief they were interrupted by Sergeant Cadotte, who motioned for them to rise. He felt the hairs prick on the back of his neck. Was this the end, then? Was the Sergeant going to shoot him and turn Polly over to his soldiers? Hugh forced himself to subdue his rising panic.
He could have sobbed with relief when the Sergeant untied their hands, handed him a dusty blanket, and gestured towards a beehive-shaped stone cairn. ‘You two will stay in the granary tonight,’ Cadotte said.
He had to go on his knees to get into the granary and Polly bent double. The Sergeant put in a bucket. ‘For your needs,’ he said gruffly, and to
Hugh’s ears, almost with an undertone of compassion. ‘I have no candle or lantern. And do not worry about mice, Madame Junot. It’s been picked clean. See you in the morning.’ He closed the door behind him and threw the bolt. They were in total darkness.
Hugh stood up, gratified that the ceiling was just tall enough to accommodate him. He put his arm on Polly’s shoulder again, and walked with her around the granary, touching the wall, feeling for any weakness. There was none. From what little he knew of Portuguese history, the villagers’ ancestors had built the granary to resist Huns and Visigoths and Moors. They have come and gone and now we are here, he thought, as the weight of the whole débâcle clamped down on his shoulders like mortar.
With a groan, he sat down and tugged Polly down beside him. Without a word, he sat cross-legged, when he could force his legs to move, and pulled her on to his lap.
It was all the invitation she needed to do what she had been holding back all day. She put her arms around his neck and sobbed into his tunic, as he knew she would. And somehow, he knew she wouldn’t be startled if he joined in. They cried together, and soon, to his own sorely tried heart, she was crooning and rubbing her hand on his back.
‘I’m sorry you had to be Sister Maria’s witness, Hugh.’
Her soft words, whispered through her own tears, comforted him as nothing else could have. He almost believed her.
‘I have dealt out my share of death and destruction, thanks to Boney, but I have never been jolted like that before,’ he confessed, hardly able to get out the words.
She sat up in his lap and found his face in the dark, pressing her hands against his temples. ‘He shouldn’t have made you a party to that!’
Her voice was fierce, and he was glad he could not see her face in the darkness. He was a professional Marine engaged in a long war, and that was his life. Either she was the world’s greatest actress, surpassed only by Siddons herself, or this young woman sitting on him in the dark didn’t want him to suffer for the shocking death he had been forced to deal out. She seemed to care less for her own safety, than that he not suffer. It touched him.
When her tears stopped, she sniffed a few times, then managed a watery chuckle. ‘I’m about to commit such a social solecism,’ she said. She leaned sideways and he could feel her tugging at her skirt. In another moment she was blowing her nose on the fabric.
‘Uh, I do have a handkerchief in my tunic,’ he said. ‘You should have asked.’
She leaned back against him again, warming his heart. ‘Save it. We might really need it later,’ she told him. Her voice faltered. ‘At least, I hope there is a “later”.’
‘So do I, Brandon, so do I,’ he said.
‘That’s “Polly, dear”,’ she reminded him, and he smiled.
‘There is something I should do,’ she told him. He heard a rip of fabric. ‘Hugh, take off your tunic and shirt and let me bandage your arm.’
He had to think a moment like a village idiot, because his wound seemed to have happened years ago. ‘It’s not bleeding now,’ he said.
‘Look you here,’ she demanded. ‘I ripped off this strip and I intend to use it. Do what I said.’
‘You’re a taskmaster,’ he teased, as he unbuttoned his tunic and removed it after she got off his lap. He unbuttoned his shirt and winced when he pulled his arm out of the sleeve. ‘Learn that from Laura Brittle?’
‘No. From my dear Nana, when she scolds her three-year-old,’ Polly retorted.
She felt along his arm, which made him smile in the dark, then rested her finger lightly on the track of the ball that had slammed into him on the barco rabelo. ‘We will pretend I am spreading on some of the salve that Philemon formulates,’ she told him. ‘At least it appears to have merely grazed your arm. Are you bulletproof?’
‘Nearly so. Ah, that should do it, wife. You’re a handy little wench.’
She laughed softly. ‘You are a rascal! There is no one you need to impress in this wretched granary. There now. Put on your coat again.’
Polly made no objection when he pulled her on to his lap again. She was silent for a long time, but he knew she wasn’t asleep. When she spoke, her voice was timid. ‘I should be braver in the dark, but I am not, Colonel.’
‘That’s Hugh,’ he pointed out prosaically. ‘“Hugh, darling”, to be exact. You keep forgetting.’
Her voice turned apologetic. ‘I should beg your pardon for saying we were married, but I couldn’t think of anything else on short notice that might help us both.’
‘It was the only thing I could think of, too, on short notice.’
‘And now you have got me with child, Hugh…’
‘…darling,’ he finished.
He felt her laugh more than heard it. ‘“Hugh, darling”, then! We will be in trouble if the French keep us for too many months. Even they can count!’
He joined in her laughter, but sobered quickly. ‘Setting aside our fictitious fertility, we’re in murky water, Brandon.’
She nodded and sighed, and he kissed the top of her head before he realised there wasn’t any need in the pitch-black granary to fool any Frenchman. ‘I fear these French, but we have reason to be wary of how desperate is their own plight.’
‘Desperate?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I learned a great deal in Lisbon about insurgents. They call themselves guerrilleros, and they do not play fair. I am reminded of my Commandant’s disgust of Americans in that late unpleasantness in the United States. The rebels shot from behind trees, and dropped logs across roads, robbed supply trains, and engaged in vastly ungentlemanlike behaviour.’
‘I thought that was the point of war.’
‘Well put, Brandon, you practical chit. You don’t think armies should just line up carefully and shoot at each other?’
‘Seems a little stupid,’ she replied, and he was glad to hear her voice getting drowsy. He didn’t plan to ever sleep again, but it would be good if she could.
‘Apparently those shadowy armies of Spain and Portugal would agree with you. It could very well be that this squad of Dragoons is in considerable danger from guerrillas. Besides that, I think they are a forlorn hope.’
‘You did mention that. I don’t understand.’
‘This may have been almost a suicide mission,’ he explained. ‘From what I learned in Lisbon, Admiral Popham’s landing north of us at Santander is finally threatening French power in León. I think Sergeant Cadotte’s commanding officer is desperate to shut off any trafficking in information, because his position is none too secure. Just a suspicion, mind.’
She digested that thought, then stated calmly, ‘It’s a good thing you have on a red coat, isn’t it?’
‘And I intend to keep it on, and you close by me at all times.’ He kissed her head again and tightened his arms around her. ‘It’s this way, Brandon—we truly have to think of ourselves as married. We must trust each other completely and look out for each other. I meant what I said about never letting you out of my sight. I intend to watch over you, as I did on the ship.’
‘You are the kindest man I have ever met, but you are probably regretting you jumped into the barco so impulsively. Was that only this morning?’
He pulled her back against him and rested his chin on her head. ‘Au contraire, wife. That is the one thing about this day that I do not regret,’ he declared, his voice firm. ‘If I had not been along, there is no telling what would have happened to you at São Jobim.’
‘Yes, there is,’ she replied quietly. ‘We know what would have happened to me.’
‘Then it was for the best.’
He didn’t think his heart could have felt any fuller just then, except that it did when she found his hand, and kissed the back of it like a supplicant. ‘I am for ever in your debt,’ she told him, then pulled his hand across her body to her shoulder until she was completely entwined in his arms.
There was no reason for him to feel even the slightest optimism, but something about holding Brandon in his arms lig
htened his mood. ‘You know, Sergeant Cadotte was entirely wrong,’ he told her.
‘Not about Sister Maria Madelena, he wasn’t,’ Polly said.
‘No, he wasn’t.’ He compromised, found her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. ‘I certainly didn’t marry you for your money.’
She was silent for a minute, and then started to laugh. There was nothing of hysteria in her laugh, so he found himself smiling in the dark, and then laughing, too.
‘You are more of a rogue than I suspected,’ she declared, when she could speak.
‘But not a mercenary one,’ he added, which sent her into another peal of laughter.
It was easier to settle down then, his arms still tight around her. She sighed, laughed low once more, and then slept. He stared ahead into the darkness, knowing that it would be ages before he would not see Sister Maria Madelena pointing the pistol at her own throat.
‘God forgive her,’ he whispered into the gloom. ‘God protect us.’
Chapter Thirteen
Polly panicked when she woke and could not feel her spectacles on her face. Terrified, she patted the ground beside her, trying not to wake up the Colonel as she searched. She stopped only when he gently took her hand and touched it to his uniform front, where she felt the outline of the glass.
‘I took them off you at some point last night. What I cannot understand, Polly, dear, is why these pesky things didn’t break yesterday. Do you want ’um now?’
She shook her head. ‘No. There’s nothing to see. Do you think it’s morning?’
‘It must be,’ he told her. He cleared his throat. ‘You’ll have to excuse my vast indelicacy, but I need to get you off my lap and edge gracefully around this granary for private purposes. You might hum loudly to drown out the symphony, or marvel at the simplicity of male anatomy.’
