6. VI #2
She did not know whose money it had been.
She knew only that every man in that passage had now heard what she had heard — that paying was possible, if a man were only wealthy enough — and that in a moment they would all begin emptying their pockets onto a table, one after another, in the hope of being the one it worked for.
Was Mr Darcy out there among them? She strained…
did not hear his voice. She certainly would have known that voice.
He probably carried enough in his pocket to buy everyone’s release, but she could not hear him.
The only familiar voice was her uncle, and it did not sound like they were satisfied with what he carried.
Then, the kitchen door slammed back on its hinges, and a man came through it at a dead run.
He had a valise under one arm and a leather case crushed against his chest, and papers were coming loose from it as he ran. Elizabeth knew his face. He had stood at Mr Darcy’s elbow in the square yesterday, patient as a post, while his master fought the language and lost.
He was not patient now. His hat was gone. He struck the yard door with his whole weight, once, twice, and it gave, and the light came in, and he was through it and running.
Half a dozen of his stolen papers went across the flagstones behind him, and no one stopped for them.
Then the soldiers came. Two of them, and a third behind. The kitchen was full of shouting, and the pans went down off their hooks in a clatter that Elizabeth would hear for a year afterward.
A hand came down through the baskets, took her by the arm, and dragged her up into the light.
He was young, and he was frightened himself; she was near enough to see the sweat cutting through the dust on his temple. He shook her once, hard, so that her teeth rattled, and put his face into hers and shouted.
“?Dónde? ?Dónde está?” He shook her so that her teeth came together. “?El inglés! ?Por dónde ha salido?”
She knew the words. She had heard them in three markets.
Where? Which way did he go? She had the answer in her mouth and could not let it out, because the first syllable of it would not be Castilian, and her gown was a grey silk-merino travelling gown with covered buttons down the front, and no kitchen girl in Navarre had ever owned such a thing.
“?Contesta!” He shook her again. “?Habla, mujer!”
Pilar came off the floor at him.
“?La puerta! ?La puerta del corral, senor, por la puerta!” She was screaming it, both arms flung toward the yard door, and she got her small body in between them and hung on the soldier’s sleeve. “?Se ha ido por el corral! ?Corra, senor, corra! ?Se escapa!”
The yard door. He has gone through the yard. Run, senor—he is getting away!
The soldier’s grip did not open. He put his face down at Elizabeth’s, and his breath was sour, and he said, low, “?Y ésta?”
And this one?
“?ésta! ?ésta no oye!” Pilar shrieked, and pulled him round by the arm, bodily, and planted herself where the light fell so that all that could be seen of Elizabeth was flour and a cap and a shoulder. “?Es sorda, senor! ?Sorda desde la fiebre!”
Deaf. The girl was telling him she was deaf.
“?No oye nada, no dice nada, no sirve para nada, y el inglés se le escapa mientras usted le grita a una sorda!”
She hears nothing, says nothing, is good for nothing, and the Englishman is getting away while you stand shouting at a deaf woman.
That last got through. He let go of Elizabeth as though she had burned him, said something foul, and went for the yard door, and the two behind him went after. The third one paused only to sweep the last of the pans off the shelf, because he was angry and there was nothing else in the room to hurt.
Elizabeth stood where he had left her, upright, out of the shadow, with her wrist singing where he had wrung it. Pilar caught at her sleeve and Elizabeth pulled free of her without once turning her head, and went to the kitchen door, and looked out into the passage.
They had half a dozen travellers, Mr Gardiner among them. They were walking him toward the street door, with a soldier at each elbow, and her uncle was still talking, his hat gone, his voice pitched to carry to any officer within hearing.
“I am a British subject! I demand to be taken before the alcalde—el alcalde, do you understand me? And you will send word to the English consul. To the consul! My name is Gardiner. Edward Gardiner, of Gracechurch Street, in London —”
The soldier on his left said something that made the other laugh.
“— and I have committed no offence whatever, and this house is full of witnesses —” He tried to stop walking.
That was all he did; he only set his heels.
They took him under the arms and lifted, and his feet went out from under him and struck the boards, and when they set him down again, his coat was pulled up round his shoulders like a man half out of a sack.
Elizabeth had come two steps into the passage when Pilar’s hands closed on her from behind—both fists in the back of her gown, hauling her backwards. Elizabeth got one more look, over the shoulders of soldiers, at her uncle’s grey head going toward the light of the open door.
He turned it. Not toward the kitchen; he could not have found her there, would not have looked if he could. He turned it toward the stair, and the upper rooms, and the empty passage, and everywhere else that she was not — so that no man beside him should learn where to look.
Then the doorway took him, and the light, and he was gone into the street.
After that, the house became noise. Cupboards opened. Trunks dragged. The landlady protested and was overborne. Pilar sank to a stool and began to cry into both hands.
Elizabeth remained where she was, upright only by force, the cap strings cutting at her throat as she choked back panicked sobs.
Prison. Vega. Englishmen. Money.
Elizabeth took one breath, then another.
Her uncle had not been lost; not found guilty of some crime, or beaten by men who only wished to harm random Englishmen. He had been taken for money.
And she had no means of buying him back.