Georgette Heyer: The Spanish Bride

‘Oh, no, not this one again!’ George agreed, with a shudder.

‘I hate sieges!’ Harry said, viciously jerking the knot of his sash. ‘The men behave like heroes, brave, drunken blackguards that they are! and then they go straight to the devil, as they’re doing now!’

‘Very true,’ George said. ‘It is melancholy, and upon more counts than one.’ ‘It plays the dickens with the brigade!’ snapped Harry.

When the living had been disentangled from the dead, and carried to the camp; and fatigue-parties of Portuguese had begun to dig great pits to receive the hundreds of the slain, there was nothing for even the keenest duty-officer to do but to visit wounded friends, or kick his heels in camp until it should please his men to reel out of Badajos, sick, probably, from excess of wine; richer, certainly, by the value of the goods they had plundered; sullen, some of them, from the knowledge of beastliness committed while they were mad with battle-fury and the wicked magic of unlimited liquor; elated, others, and bragging of unspeakable deeds; demoralized, all of them: heartrending objects to officers whose business was their welfare, and whose pride their efficiency; and who cared for them, in a queer, rough way, even when they cursed them for a set of black-hearted, gutter-born scoundrels. It would take time to shoot, and flog, and bully the divisions into shape again; and the best men were dead, and their bodies heaved one on top of the other into deep, stinking pits. New draughts would arrive presently from England: regular Johnny Raws, landing at Lisbon, and working their way goggle-eyed through Portugal to join the army, under a subaltern as raw as themselves, who would thus early in his career be given a painful chance to prove his worth. If there was stuff in him, he would get his draught to its destination intact, with most of its baggage, and without leaving a trail of pillaged farmsteads in its wake; if he lacked confidence in himself, or was found to have a strain of weakness in him, he would bring only the more tractable of his men to the division, and have a shameful tale to tell his Colonel of desertions on the road.

‘And if we get all the new draughts it will take months licking them into shape!’ said Harry, fretting at forced inaction, and so in a brittle temper, snapping at every ill. ‘And the old hands sunk to the level of gutter-sweepings after this filthy, bloody, damnable sack!’ ‘Don’t be downhearted, Harry: we shall be on the march again before the week’s out, if all I hear is true,’ said Kincaid, who had lounged over to Harry’s tent to talk over the assault with him. ‘Nothing like a few hard marches to pull the men together. You should look on the lighter side of things.’

Harry acknowledged the bantering note with one of his quick smiles, but shook his head. ‘Damned little lighter side to this affair!’

‘Oh, isn’t there, by God! You should have been with me in the small hours, when I was posting the pickets in the streets. A man of ours brought a prisoner up to me. Said he was the Governor, and plainly thought he would get a big reward for taking him.’ ‘I thought Phillipon escaped to the San Cristobal?”

‘He may have, for anything I know. A very fine fellow-by Jove, he was a fine fellow, too! quite the dandy, and with enough gold lace for a hussar!-well, he made no bones about admitting to me that he wasn’t the Governor, but had told poor Allen he was to ensure protection. He told me he was the Colonel of one of the regiments-I forget which-and that all his surviving officers were waiting in his quarters hard-by, to surrender themselves to any English officer who would be so obliging as to go to them. Ah well! I’m a Scot myself, but I went.’

‘Ambush!’ said Harry, his eyes beginning to dance.

‘Devil a bit! I took two or three men with me, and there, sure enough, were these precious French officers-fifteen or more of ’em-all assembled in the Colonel’s quarters, and not one of ’em able to understand why the town was lost, or how the devil I got in. I didn’t chose to tell ’em that. I said I’d entered at the breach, which was true enough; though how we any of us got in, when you consider the way the Johnny Crapauds hurled us back like so many recruits, was a thing that was puzzling me as much as it was puzzling them. I never saw a set of fellows so dejected! All except the Major, a big, jolly-looking Dutchman, with medals enough on his breast to have furnished the window of a tolerable toy-shop. He was a good fellow: cracked as many jokes as corks out of wine-bottles. Damme if I remember the jokes, but the wine was excellent.’

‘You villain, Johnny, do you tell me you stood there and drank with them?’ Harry demanded. ‘Stood! We sat round the table, to a dish of cold meat, and drank each others’ healths! After supper, off went my Colonel to secure his valuables. He was so grateful to me for allowing it that he told me he had a couple of good horses in the stable, which, as he wouldn’t be permitted to keep ’em, he recommended me to take. So, as a horse is the only prize we poor devils of officers can consider strictly legal, I had one of ’em saddled. And a handsome black beauty she is, my boy. Three hundred guineas at Tatt’s: not a penny less!’ Harry, always on the look-out for a good horse, was loudly envious of so much good-fortune, and proposed that he should instantly go with Kincaid to his quarters to inspect the animal. They were on the point of strolling off together when Kincaid saw two ladies coming towards them from the direction of the city. ‘Hallo, what’s this?’ he said, detaining Harry. Harry bestowed no more than a cursory glance on the approaching women. ‘What should it be but a couple of camp-followers? Come on, man! You don’t need a woman today!’ ‘No, but wait!’ Kincaid said. ‘They’re ladies. Look at their mantillas!’

By this time the two veiled figures, the smaller and slighter of the pair supported by the arm of the other, had come within earshot. Harry, a little impatient, favoured them with another look, more searching this time. He decided that Kincaid was right. Ladies they were, if quiet elegance of dress was anything to go by. He stood still, waiting beside Kincaid to see what they could want in the British camp.

The taller woman led her shrinking companion straight up to the two officers, and put back her mantilla with one thin hand. A handsome, careworn face was disclosed. The lady was no longer in the first blush of youth, but her features were fine, her eyes dark and liquid, and her bearing that of a princess. She addressed the two officers in Spanish, speaking in a voice that retained its natural dignity in spite of evident agitation. ‘Señors, you are English. I implore your aid!’

‘Anything in our power, señora!’ Kincaid replied promptly. A look of relief spread over the strained face. ‘You speak Spanish!’ ‘Tolerably well, señora, but not as well as my friend here, I believe.’ The lady’s eyes turned towards Harry, slight and wiry, and a little fidgety beside his tall friend. He bowed, but he knew that there was nothing any officer could do to help a Spaniard from Badajos, and wished that Kincaid would make an end.

The lady seemed to feel his impatience, and addressed herself again to Kincaid. ‘Señor, you must wonder at my coming into your camp thus unattended. I am of the family of Los Dolores de León. If you doubt me, let me but be brought to Colonel Campbell, or Lord Fitzroy Somerset, for they know me well!’

Her tongue tripped a little over the names, but Kincaid nodded his understanding. She continued anxiously: ‘We are of the true hidalgo blood, señor. Lord Fitzroy would know. After the battle of Talavera, he and Colonel Campbell were billeted in my house. You recall?’ ‘Yes, I recall. We made Badajos our General Headquarters.’