Page 85 of Homeless

They slept that night in a proper posada. Darcy had his own truckle that did not collapse when he pulled it out, and which let him stretch out to his full six feet and lie flat for the first time since… well, since… Elizabeth had a thick quilt, which did not seem sufficient, so he gave her his, and even with that, he heard the bed trembling as she shivered.

Supper had been a hearty stew, served with hot bread and decent wine, and it did Elizabeth no good at all that he could see. She had eaten almost nothing. She hardly noticed the garlic in the soup, said the wine was no better than the wine at Vitoria, and left most of it for him. She lay down while it was still light and did not pretend to read or to talk, even to argue with him about the bed or the road or what time they would start the next day. That frightened him more than any complaint would have, because Elizabeth not talking was Elizabeth using her strength on something else, and he did not know what.

He lay still in the dark and listened to her breathe. He did not like the sound of it — too quick, too shallow, with a small catch at the top of each breath. Surely, it was the fatigue, and weeks of bad food, and the general weariness for which no one could fault her. She was a woman, a small woman at that, who had been formerly used to the comforts of a gentle life. She had endured everything he had on this road, and her body simply had fewer resources to spend on survival. Rest was all she needed.

His head ached. It had ached every day since the high country, a dull band above his eyes that no water cured, and no sleep, either. They were down from the mountains now, but the plateau was still high, the air still thin and parched and weaker than anything he had ever known in England. Their lungs were taking a daily punishing, and nothing short of pushing through to the sea would cure either of them.

The Pancorbo defile was the worst of it.

The road out of Miranda ran on across drying country and then, without much warning, the land ahead simply ended — reared up into rock on either hand and pinched the road into a stony throat between cliffs, a gorge the mountains had grudgingly allowed a road to thread, with old forts broken on the heights above where men had fought for the holding of so narrow and so necessary a passage.

In another humour, he might have thought it magnificent. Today, he thought only that it was close, and airless, and long, and that the mule's hooves rang off the rock in a way that got into his aching head. He looked back at Elizabeth frequently, and she had gone a colour of the road — a pale grey-gold dust, as though the country were making her its own.

It was enough that he pulled his own mules off the path, let hers pass, and then brought up the rear with the pack mule, to keep his eyes on her.

Halfway up the gorge, she swayed.

It was not much. A slow list to the left, a hand coming up to the pommel too late, and a shake of her head when she had righted herself. She overcorrected, and her shoulders began dropping to the right.

Darcy slapped his mule to come beside her, and brought a hand against her side, holding her onto the animal. “Are you ill?”

Elizabeth straightened and looked at him as if he were mad. His stomach twisted when he saw the dark circles under her eyes. Those had not been there only two hours ago.

“I was only adjusting my weight,” she protested. “This cursed saddle is harder than the cliff rock.”

Darcy took his hand away. “You are shivering.”

“I have been shivering since we came into the high country. I cannot seem to get enough air.”

He studied her, the way her shoulders hunched, the way her fists locked against the trembling of her body. He had been feeling much the same at these altitudes, but this… this was progressing from troublesome to worrisome. “Do you want to rest?”

“Yes. When we get to the village where we pass the night. This path has hardly room for one mule to pass, let alone two, and there is no place to dismount that does not risk breaking one’s ankle.”

“We have not many more miles today,” he said.

“No. They are just all straight up.”

“Indeed. But we should be in Pancorbo well before dark.”

Her lips thinned into the only sort of smile he had seen from her in days. “How comforting.”

By late afternoon, they came out of the defile into lower ground. Darcy got them lodgings at Pancorbo in a rough venta that smelled of the stable it was attached to, and he lay awake most of that night as well.

Her breathing had got worse, and twice she spoke in her sleep. He had slept beside her for weeks and had never yet been awakened by her voice. She was muttering something he could not understand — not to him, not to anyone. Just random whimpers, a moan, and one deep sigh. A little while later, she said a few words to someone named Rosa, and once, clearly, “He is trying to cheat you, Uncle. That barrel is not full.”

He chuckled faintly at that. Even in sleep, her mind was ordering things. But then, a chill settled deep in his bones when he heard her suck air between her teeth and shudder under the blankets. He sat up from the floorboards and touched her shoulder and then her cheek in the dark. She was not flushed, as he had feared. Just shivering, and she groped for his hand blindly in the dark as if greedy for its warmth.

He let her drag his hand down to her chest and keep it there. She quaked deeply and hugged it to herself as she pulled in a long breath. It left her with a soft, “Ffffitz….”

He did not sleep that night. He had eased himself to a corner of the mattress, letting her hold his hand in her sleep as long as she liked, until she turned over and huddled deeper under the blankets. He watched the grey come up in the smell of the stable and leaned his aching head against the wall behind the bed.

Two days to Burgos, perhaps. A day and a half, if the road allowed, and the mules held and Elizabeth could bear the pace. Burgos was a city. A city had physicians, and apothecaries, and beds that were not next to horses, and — God knew — priests, if it came to that.

He did not let himself finish the thought of what it might come to.

XXXIII

Quina