Page 6 of Homeless

“Not five minutes since, sir, but the ostler says if your letter is ready, it may yet be took after.”

He handed her the folded sheet. “See that it is.”

“Yes, sir.” She accepted the letter and closed the door behind her.

He drew the claim papers toward him. Spanish names, official seals, sums set down by men now dead or retired or lost in the ordinary confusion of years, and figures that would not, however he recast them, come to a total a prudent man could afford to lose. He read until the names ceased to be names and became only scratches on the page.

The road ahead lay in hard stages. Take the ship for Corunna, wind permitting; get the papers and the money ashore; hire horses and lodgings for the long road inland to Madrid.

His man, he had engaged already, in London—Jennings, with Castillian enough for officials and Basque enough for servants, muleteers, and every species of scoundrel who made his living from travellers. He ought to be well served.

He did not go down to supper; he had no patience to sit among strangers discoursing upon Bonaparte, trade, the peace, or the weather, as if any of the four would improve for being talked over. By midnight, the yard had gone quiet; by one, only the sea made itself heard, and that fitfully, like a body too weary for regular complaint.

He undressed with care. Coat brushed. Papers locked away. Pistol examined and left within reach. He lay down, and did not sleep for a long time; and when sleep came at last, it had no mercy in it.

III

A Thorn Left To Fester

13 June 1814

Tudela, Navarre in Northern Spain

Elizabeth held her skirts clear of a channel best left unnamed and stepped after her uncle into the wine market. The smell of it met her at the corner—river mud and garlic and mule. A cracked wall shed its plaster into the gutter. A cart stood on a broken axle where it had been left to stand. Three discharged soldiers slept in the shade of the convent gate, and the bells rang over them without waking one.

The war was over, England said. Tudela appeared to have received the intelligence and found nothing in it worth rising for.

A fortnight in Spain had already taught her that disarray was no cause for alarm, and that a woman who waited to understand every foreign sound before she moved would stand still until she starved.

So, she moved. Across the square, the petitioners crowded the tribunal steps with their bundles of paper tied in string, as though the proper combination of shouts and seals might persuade a government to remember its own decrees. Her uncle was already bearing down upon Señor Mendizábal with the cheerful rapacity of a man who liked a trade the better for being told it could not be done.

“If he swears by the saints once more,” said Elizabeth, “I shall conclude the wine is poor. Nobody invokes all Paradise for a sound barrel. You ought to consider rejecting the lot of them.”

“On the contrary,” said her uncle, “the saints are nowhere so industrious as in a rising market.”

Mendizábal’s speech came too quickly for comfort, but too near Portuguese for complete despair. What her ear missed, her boldness could seize, and what confusion clouded, laughter and good spirits managed to clarify. Elizabeth asked, guessed, contradicted, and bridged one language to another until the bargain was struck.

Mr Gardiner secured six casks, and the promise of two more when transport could be had. Mendizábal secured enough money to restore his confidence in Providence. And Elizabeth had the fierce satisfaction of making herself useful in a way she had not been since Longbourn.

“You improve daily,” said Mr Gardiner, as they turned from the market toward the tribunal square. “At this rate, by Santander you will abuse me in three tongues and invoice me for the privilege.”

“I suspect I am mangling my verbs beyond recognition. Rosa would correct me without mercy.”

Rosa had been an indifferent linguist, but she had been exacting when it came to the pronunciation of her mother language. Elizabeth had learnt to roll her tongue and speak with a rapid, lyrical quality, for Rosa would refuse to talk to her at all if she did not please the ear. In Tudela, the language came back altered, roughened by Castilian mouths, yet more alive than it had ever sounded in Hertfordshire.

“Then to Rosa,” said Mr Gardiner, “I suspect I owe the fortune we are about to lay hands on. Come. We must make our attempt upon the tribunal before dinner, or we shall find our competition multiplied by tomorrow morning.”

The tribunal stood above the square with a dignity the square had long since ceased to respect. Its yellow front bore the royal arms in stone above a cracked arch. Men read notices they plainly could not understand. A widow in black argued with a scribe over a fee and crossed herself each time she named the sum. Two soldiers kept order, which consisted chiefly in leaning upon muskets until movement occurred and then shouting at it.

Mr Gardiner consulted a folded letter. “Herrera promised to meet me here. If he fails me, I shall put him down as one more nuisance in a country already too hot for my liking.”

“If he does come,” said Elizabeth, “he will be late, for my stomach is already complaining.”

He laughed. “Wait here, where you will not be jostled overmuch. If Herrera appears, I must catch him before some man with older papers and a sadder history carries him off.”

He disappeared into the crowd with the agility of a merchant who had spent half his life getting where richer men hoped to stand first. Elizabeth moved nearer the wall and gave herself up for a moment to the business of attending to everything at once. One watched in a market such as this, or one was cheated. One listened, or one was lost.

That was when an English voice cut the square.