Send Me Safely Back Again by Adrian Goldsworthy Page A

thoughtful expression on her face.
    ‘Pity,’ said Jenny Dobson, and then managed to shift his dead weight enough so that there was sufficient of the bed for her to sleep. Half an hour would be about right before she should reappear and meet her next client.

7
     
    B y the fourth day, Williams’ frame ached from the jolting of the carriage and his skin itched from the bites of the lice infesting his clothing. Apart from one night at Cáceres, they stayed at rustic coaching inns. There was always a good room for the Doña Margarita, and a smaller but decent one for Wickham the confessor. The aristocrat brought her own linen with her to ensure a clean bed and Ramón strictly supervised the inn’s maids to ensure the lady’s bed was decently made.
    He and the other ‘servants’ found space in the stables on dirty straw alive with vermin, and surrounded by the horses, mules and the other folk unable to afford or demand a room. Williams and Dobson slept in their clothes, both because it was still cold during the nights and to keep their red jackets concealed. Apart from that, it would, as Dobson said, ‘Stop any thieving hound from making off with them.’
    They made good progress, and the Doña Margarita’s fine name and even finer letters of recommendation carried them through every check. Each French officer they met was treated to a warm smile, elegant flattery and the gift of another Indian purse.
    ‘A man in the market at Seville makes them,’ the lady replied when Williams heard Wickham express surprise that she carried so many mementoes of her years in the New World.
    ‘Smart girl, as I said,’ whispered Dobson to the ensign.
    They overheard little conversation from the inside of the carriage. Sometimes this was because the noise of the wheels and creaks of the springs and harness muffled the sound, butmore often it was simply that there was no talk. La Doña Margarita appeared to prefer silence. At the beginning Wickham had constantly attempted to strike up a conversation, but his persistence met with little encouragement and no real success. Williams had no opportunity at all to converse with the lady, and indeed rarely saw her, since he was on the far side of the carriage. At night, the Doña Margarita pulled her thickly laced mantilla down over her face before leaving the carriage. After all these days, Williams doubted that he could have picked her face out in a crowd. There was a distinctive badge sewn on to the sleeve of her black travelling dress, which had an embroidered figure of the Madonna surrounded by a wreath.
    ‘Saragossa,’ said Ramón the driver, as if that explained everything. ‘We were there in the siege.’ He spoke slowly and haltingly in English, although Williams suspected that he concealed a better knowledge of the language. ‘A big fire in the hospital. My lady go in. She pull out
tres
. All alive, but she burn her arms. My poor lady. Very brave.’
    They got no more from him, and the servant was otherwise as resolutely silent as the mistress. Williams had heard a little of the heroines of Saragossa, who had helped the city repel the French last year. The most famous was Augustina, whose lover had fallen, but who nevertheless fired the cannon he had loaded and so shattered a French attack. Ramón’s story made Williams regret all the more the lack of opportunity to converse with so brave a lady.
    At dawn on the fifth day they crossed the Tagus by ferry – the signature and seal of King Joseph once again speeding their way. Then they went north-west along a good road, which ate up the miles.
    Williams struggled to maintain his sense of where they were. He wondered about Pringle and the detachment of the 106th and whether or not they would be waiting at the rendezvous. It was hard to believe that men could march as fast as the carriage, even if their route was more direct. On this, at least, he was willing toshare some of Dobson’s doubts about the hearty assurances of the