Chapter 15
León
The seventh day of their journey. The dawn was silent and windless; the grey west wind had passed away.
When the day arrived, the mood of the world about them had subtly changed.
Slowly the dawn grew to a pale light. Mist swathed the hills and ravines, but was quickly dissipating as the sun broached the mountains to the east.
“Are you able to walk?” asked Elizabeth, as both Georgiana and Lydia climbed to their feet.
“I shall try,” said Lydia. Her face was drawn, but her eyes held the spirit that Elizabeth had glimpsed the night before. There were no hysterics, no crying for Mama—that was in the past, left behind in the Bay of Biscay.
“If Lydia is game, then I am also,” said Georgiana, “though I may need help, for the trail ahead looks so very fearsome.” Lydia took her hand. Their illness—and the both of them being carried in litters—had created a bond.
The party was quickly packed—breakfast would wait until they were well away from the hermitage.
With a heavy heart, Darcy watched Georgiana and Lydia take their first tentative steps along the trail.
They ascended a narrow path cut into a steep, almost sheer, hillside, which led to the Hoces de Rodiezmo, a narrow gorge with steep rock walls on either side, the source of the Rodiezmo River.
They followed a mule-trail down a gentle descent until Don Mateo called a halt.
“We shall wait here. I have sent a man ahead to see whether there are any French in La Robla. If so, we must bypass the town. It is a steep path, and the young ladies may find it very difficult.”
“Is there another route, perhaps a little longer, but easier going?” Darcy came up to stand with Fitzwilliam and Don Mateo.
“Perhaps,” replied the Spaniard, “but we would be forced to travel to the west, nearer to the French garrison at Astorga, and cross the road from León. The road is heavily patrolled, and we may have to cross at night. And, as you have seen, the terrain is very difficult. I believe your riflemen would have no difficulty, but—”
He let the implication linger. While Georgiana and Lydia were showing remarkable resilience, having walked without complaint for the past five miles, scrambling through brush-covered hillsides in the dark would be nigh on impossible.
A faint whistle echoed down the gorge. Don Mateo stiffened, listening. Moments later, a wiry man in a battered felt hat appeared at the bend in the trail, breathless from running but grinning broadly.
“La Robla is quiet,” he said in quick Spanish, “but there are rumours of a patrol heading north. Best to keep moving, senor.”
Don Mateo turned to Fitzwilliam. “We must make for the valley before they arrive. If we are fortunate, we may find shelter in the woods beyond the town.”
Fitzwilliam nodded. “The girls—can they manage it?”
“As well as any of us,” Darcy replied, watching as Georgiana rose, brushing dust from her skirt and squaring her shoulders.
They set off, the trail narrowing, stones shifting beneath their boots.
Above, a hawk circled lazily, indifferent to the urgency below.
Elizabeth kept close to Lydia, steadying her when she faltered.
Every so often, Don Mateo would glance back, his face grim, as if measuring their progress against some invisible clock.
Twice they paused to listen—for hoofbeats, for shouts, for any sign that the French were drawing closer.
Each time, only the sound of the river and the distant clangour of cowbells greeted them.
The sun climbed higher, burning away the last of the chill, and by midday they came in sight of the clustered roofs of La Robla, smoke rising gently from the chimneys.
“Now,” murmured Don Mateo, “we must be quick and very quiet.”
The village was small, a hamlet of only a few dozen families. The party hurried along the road between the cramped houses, aware that if they were discovered by a French patrol, it was not only they who would suffer, for the village itself would be burnt.
As they passed, a woman came hurrying from a low stone house, the roof thatched with rye straw. She carried a loaf of bread which she thrust into Elizabeth’s hands.
“Muches gracies—thank you very much.” Elizabeth embraced the woman, who hurried back to her house.
These people, who had so little, were giving whatever they had to the partisans, and to the British soldiers.
She had noticed, when they first came to the town, a few young men scrambling into the hills, deserters from the Spanish army, or hiding from the French.
As soon as they passed the last house, the company left the road and followed the pilgrim trail that wound through the hills between La Robla and León.
The path, faint in places, meandered between stands of chestnut and beech.
The riflemen spread out, two moving ahead under Lieutenant Goulding’s direction, their green jackets blending with the shadows beneath the trees.
Elizabeth felt the landscape change around them: the valley fell away behind, replaced by broken ridges and abrupt escarpments.
Here and there, stone crosses marked the way, moss-covered and ancient, reminders of the countless feet that had trodden this route.
Georgiana, pale but resolute, pressed on beside Lydia, who clung to her arm as the track grew steeper.
Darcy and Fitzwilliam kept a steady pace at their rear, ever alert, eyes sweeping the hillside for any flicker of movement that might betray a hidden threat.
The sun, now fully risen, broke through scattered clouds, throwing moving shadows across the trail.
The riflemen’s boots scuffed against loose shale, and the occasional cough of a rifle sling shifting was the only sound to disturb the hush.
It felt to Elizabeth as though the world had narrowed to this ribbon of earth, this fragile party threading its way through a wild and ancient land.
After an hour’s march, Don Mateo called a halt beneath a stand of pines. “From here,” he said quietly, “the trail climbs to the pass. We must keep to the ridges—French patrols are less likely to venture there. If we are seen, do not run. Keep together and move quickly, but quietly.”
Elizabeth looked to Georgiana and Lydia, reading the fatigue on their faces but also the stubborn resolve. “Can you continue?” she said softly, and received two determined nods in return.
The party pressed onward, the ground rising ever more steeply.
Once, the sharp crack of a distant shot startled them all.
The riflemen melted into the brush, tense and ready, but the hills swallowed the sound and no enemy appeared.
They waited, hearts pounding, before Don Mateo signalled that all was clear and they hurried on.
As the afternoon lengthened, the trail curved along a shoulder of bare rock, giving them, for a moment, an unbroken view of the vast plain stretching toward León.
Smoke from distant villages rose in pale columns.
Somewhere out there, French columns were on the march.
But for now, in the high country, the small party pressed on.
At last, as the sun dipped behind the highest ridge, Don Mateo pointed to a cluster of ruined stone buildings half-hidden in a fold of the hillside. “We’ll rest there,” he said. “It was once a pilgrim’s shelter. Tonight, it will serve us well enough.”
They stumbled into the broken walls, grateful for the chance to drop their packs and share the bread gifted to them in La Robla.
Elizabeth found herself smiling at Lydia and Georgiana, pride and relief mingling in her breast. The worst, she hoped, was behind them—though she knew, as she met Darcy’s thoughtful gaze, that the journey was far from over.
* * *
It was late afternoon when they came to the high ridge above León. Below them, the city sprawled, its ancient walls casting long shadows. But it was not the city that held their eyes. It was the smoke rising from the low ground beyond, where the French had made their camp.
Colonel Fitzwilliam shifted at Darcy’s side, his boots scattering dew from the tufts of grass. He stood rigid, his jaw set, the lines of his face deepened by fatigue and unease. He was not a man given to nerves, but this evening he stared at the French fires as though they were an omen.
Don Mateo, the partisan leader, crouched on his haunches near the edge of the ridge.
His eyes, dark and sharp as a hawk’s, missed nothing.
More partisans had joined them during the morning.
They now waited below, scattered among the boulders, their muskets primed and their faces wary.
Will Goulding’s riflemen took what rest they could, lying out of sight just beyond the ridgeline.
Elizabeth came up to stand beside Darcy, staring down at the town, flinching when she saw the French camp.
Soldiers in blue coats clustered about the fires, pickets posted along the roads, cavalry horses stamping and steaming in the chill.
“Damnation,” muttered Colonel Fitzwilliam. There were more soldiers than he had expected. Far more. Tents stretched in ragged rows, musket stacks gleamed, pennants fluttered in the wind. Caffarelli’s division—the damned Army of the North—was not supposed to be here at all.
“By rights,” Fitzwilliam muttered, “he should be to the east, guarding the road to Burgos. Not in León.” He spat, an angry, frustrated sound. “What in God’s name is he doing here?”
Don Mateo shrugged, a typically Spanish gesture—shoulders up, palms spread, as if to say the world was a fool’s game and none could know its rules. “They are foxes, Colonel. They come where they like. Perhaps they know you are here.”