Juana cared nothing for the grins of the soldiers who watched her, nothing for her aching limbs, or bruises. All she thought of was to be rid of the obnoxious leading-rein, which Harry insisted on. He had to be very firm with her, so firm, in fact, that they found themselves, almost before they knew it, right in the middle of their first quarrel. Both being hot-tempered, the quarrel rose quickly to an alarming pitch.
‘Espadachin. Tirana odioso!’ Juana spat at Harry, transformed from a loving, eager child into a raging fury.
‘Estupida!’ Harry tossed back at her. ‘Why, you obstinate little devil, if ever I saw such a shrew!’
A torrent of swift Spanish invective drowned his words. He laughed, and Juana, wrenching at the riding-switch he had given her, struck at him. Harry caught the switch, twisted it out of her hold, and grasped her by the shoulders, and shook her till she caught her breath on an angry sob.
‘Now, listen, you!’ Harry said, in the voice his men knew well. ‘You will do as I bid you! Is it understood?’
‘No!’
‘Then you’ll ride on a pack-mule, with the baggage,’ said Harry coolly, releasing her. ‘I’ll procure one.’
‘You dare not!’ ‘Wait and see!’ said Harry, over his shoulder.
Tears sprang to her eyes; Harry whistled carelessly between his teeth, a snatch of one of the songs of the moment. Juana stamped her foot. ‘Insensate! I hate you!’ ‘It is seen!’ said Harry, flinging up his hand to show the weal her switch had raised across his palm.
There was an awful silence. ‘I did not do that!’ Juana said chokingly. ‘No! No!’ ‘Si!’
She flushed scarlet; the tears chased one another down her cheeks; she turned away, hanging her head. ‘I am sorry! Indeed, I am sorry!’
Two strides brought Harry to her side. ‘It’s nothing, hija, nothing at all! I was only teasing you!’
She nursed his hand against her wet cheek. ‘I am horrible and wicked! I am ashamed! Yet I do not wish to have my bridle held. Please, Enrique?’
‘No, you little varmint, no!’ Harry said, pinching her nose. ‘Not till you can ride well enough to satisfy me.’
‘When we go on the march?’ ‘I promise nothing.’
‘Ay de mi!’ sighed Juana, temporarily accepting defeat.
Harry would not let her stir beyond his quarters without himself or West’s being in attendance on her. Happily, her strict upbringing led her to yield without protest to this decree. The camp, ever since their marriage-day, fairly seethed with activity. Country people from miles round drifted in to buy the plunder which the soldiers, lurching out of Badajos, brought with them for sale,
‘Damme, the camp looks like a lousy fairground!” exploded Charlie Beckwith, glaring at a knot of bargainers vociferously besieging a gentleman in a French grenadier’s coat, and a Rifleman’s green-tufted shako, who was offering to the highest bidder a roll of cloth, and a picture in a gilt frame. A soldier, who looked as though the sack of Badajos had exhausted him more than the siege, stood owlishly at gaze. ‘Get to your quarters, you drunken swine!’ rasped Beckwith. ‘I’ll tell you what, Harry: you’ll do well to keep that wife of yours under guard! I never saw the men in such a state!’
‘Damn all sieges!’ said Harry heartily. ‘Juana’s safe enough. Thank God, we’re to shake the dust of this hellish place off our feet at once!’
But before he could collect all his men from the ravaged city, Lord Wellington was forced to march a regiment of Portuguese into the market-place, and to erect three grim gallows there. He hanged one or two men, and the rest took timely warning, for they knew his lordship’s temper, and slunk back to camp. There, the officers wrought with them to such purpose that on 11th April, five days after the storm of Badajos, the Light division was able to break camp, and march north to Campo Mayor.
They left behind them scores of smouldering bonfires, for every man, before he marched, was ordered to open up his kit-bag, and to disgorge any plunder he had hidden there. Every illicit possession that could be burnt was flung on to the fires, but most of the soldiers had contrived to sell what they had brought out of the town, and cherished in place of useless treasures a few precious coins.
It was a division sated with excesses that marched away from Badajos. Some men returned cheerfully to the normal routine of army life; some grumbled, and some were dangerously sulky. ‘Give us but a week on the march, and the Sweeps will be themselves again!’ said Jack Molloy, casting a fierce, affectionate glance over his ragged company.
5
They had a fortnight. They marched out of Spain into the deadly Alemtejo province of Portugal. They did not linger there. ‘Once in Alemtejo, never out of it again alive,’ ran the proverb. For six days, until they reached Castello Branco, they marched every day, always northward. They went by way of Campo Mayor, Arronches (where Juana, wrapped in Harry’s boat-cloak, bivouacked in a wood, sleeping soundly on the ground by the embers of a camp-fire), and Portalegre, somewhat battered, but still one of the best of the Portuguese border towns. They crossed the Tagus by Villa Velha, a ruined village built on the side of a ravine, and reached Castello Branco on 16th April, there to halt for a day, to rest the men, and to give the supplies time to come up.
If Harry had doubted Juana’s ability to keep up with the division, or to bear with equanimity the fatigue of long marches, and the discomfort of primitive lodgings, his doubts were very soon put to rest. She was a born campaigner. She rode her Portuguese horse in the rear of the column, with West, when Harry went ahead, and never a murmur of complaint was heard to pass her lips. Unused to riding, she was, during those first days, so stiff and cramped when she was lifted down from her saddle that sometimes her legs would not bear her, and she would have fallen had no arm been there to support her. But there was always an arm: if not Harry’s, West’s, or, very soon, the arm of any officer or private who was at hand. She had a genius for making friends, and this quality in her, coupled with the romantic circumstances of her marriage (the story of which was, in a very short time, known to everyone in the division), made her an interesting figure. The men’s imaginations were fired before ever they saw her; when they became familiar with her friendly smile, and saw how her gallant, erect little figure never sagged in the saddle, they took her to their hearts, and were even pleased when she rode with the column, a thing not generally popular with infantry regiments.
Nothing could quench Juana’s spirits. The weather was inclement, but if it rained she buttoned up the frieze cloak Harry had procured for her, and laughed at the mud which spattered her from head to foot. If her teeth chattered with cold, she clenched them, and twisted her bridle round her hand that it might not slip from her benumbed fingers. A lodging in a half-ruined cottage, flea-ridden and filthy, drew from her no ladylike shudders or fits of the vapours, but only a pungent and unflattering comparison of the Portuguese nation with the Spanish. She and Jenny Bates would immediately set to work to make their quarters habitable, and by the time Harry came to join her he would find a temporary home, no mere billet.
She had promised Harry that never would she grudge the hours he must spend away from her, and she kept her promise to the letter. ‘Are you sure you have done all your duty?’ she would ask him, holding herself aloof. Then he would open his arms to her, and she would run into them, with no reproaches for neglect on a hard march, and no complaints of weariness, or the discomfort of their quarters.
She began to give Harry scraps of information about the men in his brigade. ‘George Green has eight children,’ she would say. ‘Five of them are boys, but he says they shall not join the army.’ Or, ‘Willy Dean gets boils in Alemtejo, and he has one now on his neck, which is why he holds his head so. But I have given him some ointment to put on it, and he says already it is better.’