“Sleeps with the men,” the landlady finished firmly. “Do you think this is a rich, grand fonda with a room for each guest?” Her smile was narrow but sympathetic. “You are newly wed, niña?”
Child. Thea sighed inwardly. “Married this morning, Señora,” she admitted gravely. The least Matlin could have done, she was thinking irritably, was to have said good night to her.
“Married today? Diós, Señora, what are you doing travelling on your wedding day? Is your husband mad? Are your family mad?” The landlady clucked sadly. “What a start to your marriage! Terrible, what an omen.” She pushed Thea before her into a dark, boxy room that held three broad straw-filled pallets and a collection of disreputable blankets. Thea clutched the blanket she carried with her gratefully and tried to decide which of the pallets looked the least objectionable.
The landlady was still muttering behind her: “Married today, ai, what a thing. Señora, wait, I beg you. I have a thought.” The woman turned and disappeared, skirts swinging officiously.
Thea waited.
Five minutes later, as she eyed the pallets ruefully, the landlady reappeared. “I have solved everything,” she announced happily. Pushing Thea before her out of the room and toward the kitchen she explained. “My husband is a good man, Señora, although he hardly looks it, I know.” Thea had privately put him down as a rogue, in fact. “I spoke with him, and we are agreed: you and your husband shall have our room tonight. Ramon will sleep in the men’s room tonight, and I in the women’s.”
It was clearly a sacrifice too magnanimous to be refused, even had she wished to do. Thea thanked the woman sincerely and led the way back to the kitchen past the open door of the men’s room, where one figure was already sprawled on a straw mattress and snoring drunkenly. The first words she heard as she crossed the threshold into the kitchen were Matlin’s.
“It is not possible,” he was saying.
It took more than a moment for Thea to understand that he was refusing the gesture and insisting that they could not possibly turn their hosts from their room. It was obvious to her that he was not arguing from politeness, but out of conviction.
“Mi esposo,” she began urgently, her hand on his sleeve. It was the first time she had called him husband. The look Matlin gave her was not one of gratification; it was impatient and resentful. If these people truly wished to make the sacrifice, she thought, it was hardly civil to refuse. “Mi esposo, “ she began again.
He shook her hand off his arm angrily. “Cállete,” he commanded between his teeth. Be quiet. Then, to the innkeeper he said slowly, “It is not possible. I....” He looked off into the air for a moment, trying to find the words. “I took a vow to the Virgin. Until we reach my wife’s relatives....” He shrugged. At the fireside table one of their fellow travellers chuckled ribaldly, and Thea felt herself blush.
The innkeeper nodded, puzzled but satisfied. The landlady, a little wiser than her husband, stalked off muttering of unnatural promises and poor children abandoned on their wedding days. The other guests turned their attention to food and wine and ignored the young couple pointedly.
“A vow?” Thea said, “I don’t understand.”
“Go to sleep,” Matlin said urgently. “You must be tired. We can talk in the morning.” He patted her shoulder awkwardly, then turned away toward the door. “I’m going to get a breath of air.”
The landlord frowned at Thea. “Do as your husband suggests, Señora. It’s hard enough for a man to keep any vow without a disobedient wife to plague him.”
Stiffly, Thea nodded and walked past him, past the curious drinkers at the table, into the women’s room, alone.
Chapter Five
After the exhaustion and bitter confusion of her wedding day, Thea awoke the next morning after far too little sleep with her hair matted and great dark circles under her eyes. She made a few motions at tidying herself before she pulled her shawl down firmly over her fair hair and went out to meet Matlin in the yard. “Very convincing,” he murmured to her. “You look the complete peasant woman.” Then he began to abuse her loudly in rough Spanish for a lazy, good-for-nothing wife, and Thea forced herself to remember the parts they were playing. Later, as they passed women who walked or rode paces behind their men, or listened to submissive murmurs, “Si, mi esposo,” Thea remembered, and added their mannerisms to her own part.
They stopped each night in grimy, crowded posadas much like the first, where for a few coins they had a place to sleep, and where the food they had brought with them would be cooked in the same greasy pan which moments earlier had held the landlord’s dinner or a farmer’s sausage. Thea would then stumble off, dizzy with exhaustion, to the women’s bedding, usually no more than one huge straw pallet on which all female visitors slept, while Matlin stayed behind, listening to the men talk. In the women’s room there was always gossip, and somehow Thea always was brought to admit that she was newly wed; after that there was coarse, well-meant raillery to be endured, all the more uncomfortable for her in her odd halfway state, wife but no wife. A question plagued her even after her bedmates had dropped off to sleep: what is wrong with me?
On the fifth day of traveling they stopped under a scruffy tree at a roadside to eat. During these informal meals Matlin would relax a bit, talk with her, even amuse her with stories as he had done on the afternoon of their wedding day. “So far all I have had to do is answer simple questions and listen,” he admitted ruefully and in English. “I go in terror that sooner or later I will have to make a full declarative sentence without grunts or shaking my head, and then our game will truly be up. God, but I’ll be glad to see England again.”
“So will I,” Thea agreed. “My hair is nearly brown with all this dirt, and I hate to think what Silvy would say about my complexion.”
“As to your hair, the browner the better for the nonce, I should say. A blonde is too easily remarkable, and that is simply dangerous. As for your complexion—well, you look healthy, except for those circles under your eyes. Don’t you sleep well, child?”
How can I, she wanted to ask, throwing his solicitous tone in his teeth. He appeared to find nothing odd in their marriage, in the pretense in their relations. “I’m all right,” she said at last. Something in her voice must have disturbed Matlin; he applied himself more heartily to his bread and cheese.
“I calculate that we have about a hundred fifty miles to go to Oporto. From there, I should be able to locate a privateer or man-of-war lying offshore, and we’ll have the last leg of our journey, at least, in some comfort, child.”
I am not a child, she thought furiously. “We have a way to go today, then,” was what she said.
“We’ve made a good start, in any case.” He rose to pack away the waterskin and remains of their meal. As he reached his feet Matlin’s face went white for a moment and he swayed, clutching the lead rein of one of the mules to steady himself. Then he smiled unconvincingly at Thea. “Clumsy brute.”
She would not be so easily fobbed off. “Is it your head that hurts you? Matlin, let me see. Are you still dizzy?”
He waved off her attention irritably. “It was only for a moment, for God’s sake. The sun—the heat—No!” he spat as she stood on her toes to reach up and sweep aside the dark hair that covered his scar. It looked well enough, long, ragged, but with pink healthy tissue under the grime that covered most of his face. “For God’s sake, girl, I’m all right.” Brusquely he pushed her aside.
“Lo siento, seguro, “ Thea snapped, as angry as he, and clambered onto her mule without his help.
They rode silently for the rest of the afternoon, each regretting the outburst. It was nearly sundown when they approached a largish village which seemed unusually busy, even for this post-siesta time of day. “You rest here,” Matlin instructed curtly. “I want to see what’s happening in the town. If anyone comes, you’re waiting for your man; his name is, uh, Miguel.”
“Si, Miguel, grácias. “ She watched him tie his mule up with hers, and she stared at the dark, tra
vel-stained back of his jacket until he was out of sight. Then, because there was little to keep her from thinking of herself and her husband, Thea settled herself up against a rock and began to sing one of Sister Ana’s old songs. Gradually the late heat of the day and fatigue made her drowsy, and she slipped into a light doze.
When she wakened it took a moment for her to recall where she was and how long she had been waiting there. Matlin was long overdue; the light was very nearly gone. He said to wait, but she was certain that something had happened. His Spanish was so chancy and—she admitted to herself—that dizzy spell of his had frightened her badly.
Standing stiffly, Thea unlashed the mules from the tree where they were patiently cropping low branches. She pulled her shawl down again over her filthy, betraying hair and started off in the direction Matlin had taken. As she walked she could hear the sound of voices, men’s voices singing boisterously in French. A frisson ran down her spine; they were in the village, right enough, and from the few words she could make out from this distance she surmised that most of them were very drunk. “Dear God, don’t let him have been taken,” she whispered. Then, remembering to drop her shoulders in the self-effacing imitation of a peasant wife, she started down the hill into the village proper.
She wondered if she dared to ask for him directly. “Have you seen my husband, a young man so tall, in a blue jacket and black trousers....” Surely there must be some way to describe him without drawing suspicion. Then, with the memory of Matlin’s sudden, frightening dizziness as her inspiration, Thea had her plan, just in time to try her story on two approaching foot soldiers. They were very drunk and looked at her owlishly when she began her distracted wailing.
“Sirs, please, Señores, have you seen my husband, my Miguel?” A touch of the shrew, a touch of Silvy’s worried tone, the edgy humility of the wife of Manuel in the convent village. “Please, sirs, have you seen him? This tall, with a blue jacket that my mother made, God rest her soul....” She crossed herself and rattled on in Spanish, watching them as carefully as she dared. They were amused by her; that was easily seen, but she suspected they understood very little of what she said.
“Sposo? Sposo?” One of them echoed her. Then, in French, “Come here, darling, give us a kiss.”
Panicked, Thea drew back. It had never occurred to her that anyone would accost her. Again, invoking the Virgin and all the saints she could recall, she begged for news of her husband. “Since the mule kicked him, Señores, Miguel has been, you know? A little funny in the head. Says things no one can understand....” That, in case Matlin had been captured and made some sort of slip into English. She prayed, in that case, that none of the soldiers understood English.
Neither of the men were interested in Miguel, but the nearer of them reached an arm out for Thea and pawed her shoulder heavily. She struggled backward with a stifled shriek, frightened in earnest now.
“What’s the noise? Paul, Edouard? What’s she bawling about?” From a brightly lit doorway a fat uniformed figure lumbered toward them. “¿Que es el problema?” he asked laboriously. With a sigh Thea began her tale again, of Miguel and his poor, mule-addled wits.
“He told me to mind the mules, Señor, then—nothing! Me, I am a good wife; I do what I am told, but he has been gone so long, I was afraid. Señor, when his head hurts he becomes so strange, for the love of God and all the saints in heaven, have you seen him, please?”
“A crazy man, you say? In a blue jacket? Edouard, what of the fool that fell down at Emile’s feet. He wore a blue jacket, didn’t he?”
While Thea struggled to hide her impatience the sergeant and his two drunken men debated whether or not the imbecile they had taken in for questioning could be the man she sought.
At last, “Señora, best you come with me and see, eh?” The sergeant put a meaty arm out to her in a gesture of courtliness; he reeked of garlic and sweat, and Thea was glad to have the distance of the mules between them as they went. She kept up her stream of distracted chatter and fretted over what would happen to her if she lost her man. “A good husband until the accident, I swear, and even now when the pain is not bad.” They went round the side of the posada, from which raucous singing still issued, and back to a tiny shack illuminated by a single tin lantern.
“Well, Señora? Is this your husband?” The sergeant leaned unnecessarily close to push the door open for her, and there, sullenly crouched into a corner on a pile of straw, was Matlin. Quickly, so as to give him no time to slip and destroy her beautiful fiction, Thea rushed into the room, babbling her thanks to the sergeant, to Providence, and to the entirety of the occupying forces which had taken pity on her addlewitted spouse. Then, dropping to her knees before him, hoping that she would block any sign of astonishment on his face from the sergeant’s sight, she began to alternate apology with wifely abuse. “Don’t you know me? Miguel, I was so worried! You go wandering and getting into trouble, and now we shall never reach my uncle’s house, and the wedding is tomorrow....”
Turning again to begin her litany of thanks to the sergeant, Thea saw him exchange a look with Matlin that plainly said “Women!” Then, with a courtliness which belied his girth, he bowed to her. “Perhaps the Señora will take a cup of wine with me?” Thea felt Matlin stiffen at her side. She rose, tugging her shawl down and tight about her head, and bobbed a rustic curtsy. “Thank you, oh a thousand times, Señor, but Miguel and I are promised for my cousin’s wedding, and now he has made us late with his poor head and....” Looking up into the man’s moon-shaped face and willing him to believe her, Thea did not see his large arm reaching for her waist.
“Come, Señora, a little kiss for a soldier of the Empire,” he wheedled.
Thinking quickly, Thea twisted away with something between a laugh and a cry of outrage. “Sergeant, I am a good wife! If I were a young girl again...” she managed, back safely by Matlin’s side, to imply that alone she would have been his for the asking. The assurance was enough, it seemed. With another creaking bow the sergeant closed the door and left Thea alone with Matlin.
They looked at each other for a long moment, paralyzed. “Are you all right?” Thea asked at last, low and in English. “They said you’d fallen at someone’s feet.”
“Tripped, more likely. My Spanish began to fail me and, thank God, they seemed ready to believe the same fable you so capably spread about: that I was an imbecile of some sort.” His smile was white in the dim light. “You’re a valuable companion, child; my congratulations.” Thea tried to pull away, bristling, but his arm was around her. “We’d best get clear of this town before your suitor decides to try his luck with you again. Bastard,” he added viciously, under his breath.
Leading the mules between them they left the town in silence and listened for sounds of other soldiers, ready to fall into their roles again if necessary. Not until they had put a good two miles between the encampment and themselves did Matlin let them stop, and they made camp a short way from the road, under a circle of fir trees.
“Do we dare have a fire?” Thea asked when he had handed her the hamper which held their dwindling supply of food.
“Can you manage without? I don’t think it will be very cold tonight.”
Thea only nodded and busied herself in tearing apart the stale loaf. It was a grim enough meal: cold, stale water, crumbling bread, crumbs of cheese left from the generous piece the Sisters had given them. For the first time Thea thought kindly of her small cell at the convent. When the food was gone and she had not even the entertainment of a fire, when she was worn out with worry, play-acting, and Matlin’s strained silence, there was nothing for Thea to do but pull her shawl about her shoulders and curl up miserably against one of the trees. A few feet away Matlin sat, absorbed by his thoughts; he was staring at nothing. Just before she drifted into exhausted sleep Thea opened her eyes to look at him and heard again the French footsoldier’s words, esposo? esposo? A question indeed.
o0o
Matlin was aware of Thea’s misery but no
t sure of its origin, and as there was nothing he could do for her, certainly nothing he could do that would not increase his own sense of shame at the sorrowful figure he had cut that day, he said nothing, did nothing. It had not occurred to him. He thought of her as such a child still that he had never imagined she could be offered the sort of insult she had met with that day. She had handled it; she had let him know with a quick pressure of her hand against his side that she must be the one to answer the sergeant’s advances. That she had been correct made no difference. What treatment had she met before she found him in the hut? The joke of it, a child barely in her teens handling those damned brutes of soldiers while he sat there struggling to keep his mouth shut.
Another part of his mind willingly acknowledged that in the skirt and fitted jacket of a peasant woman the girl looked older, old enough to be a wife in earnest, if one knew no better. He thought of Thea as she had hurled herself into the hut that evening and of the very different image of the pretty child in those ridiculous nun’s robes, the child playing with kittens outside his window. It was difficult to believe they could be the same woman. Girl, he corrected himself. Child, but a brave, game child nonetheless. There was no doubt he had been right to help her away from the convent; she deserved her chance to play the young lady, to fall in love with some bright, unspoilt boy who would make a faithful husband to her in good earnest. It was curiously disturbing, that vision.
Shaking himself from these thoughts, Matlin rose and checked the mules’ tethers. Then, bowing to a foolish whim, he went to where Thea slept curled tightly up, shivering in her sleep. I might have built her a fire, he thought regretfully. No, not tonight, too risky. She understood that, he hoped. God knew she had had enough to understand on this journey. Thoughtfully he watched her for a moment and then removed his coat, draped it over her, and went to sit against another tree and to try for sleep himself.
“How far have we come?” she asked the next morning. Talking idly in Spanish, in the full glare of the day, both felt easier.
Spanish Marriage Page 6