The North Road
XXVII
“Al norte,” Elizabeth said, for the fourth time that morning, and for the fourth time she got back a shrug that might have meant the road, or the weather, or the war, or the general unknowability of God’s designs.
The carter had decided somewhere inside her first word that whatever she wanted would cost him nothing to refuse, and had gone deaf to suit.
She tried him once more — was the Salvatierra road safe, had he driven it, had anyone he knew — and he had simply taken her coin and walked off in the middle of her questions.
“Brigands,” she breathed. “Armed bands robbing travellers, particularly foreign ones who look like they carry gold.”
“It cannot be as bad as the Encartaciones road, surely,” Darcy replied. “Our traveller’s permit specifically says we are cleared to go up the route from Vitoria to Bilbao. And we have the mules, still. We are hardly afoot.”
Elizabeth was squinting slightly as she listened to a dozen voices and tried to make out specific ones. “Their mules were stolen. And…” She put a hand to her mouth in horror. “Oh… oh, good heavens.”
“And what?” Darcy asked urgently. “Was someone killed?”
Elizabeth shook her head, her hand still covering her mouth. “No, but they may wish they had been.”
“Elizabeth, what?”
She swallowed. “Two of their women were taken and used rather badly. For several days, it seems, before they were found abandoned and in a pitiful state.”
Darcy’s face went ashen. She had never seen his features so pale, and for a moment, he looked as if he might faint. “We cannot go that way.”
“But what choice have we?” she hissed. “There is no other road!”
“There is the Castille road to Burgos.”
Elizabeth stared. “Burgos? That takes us southwest! We want to go north, Mr Darcy.”
“The Castille is the more established road and will be decidedly safer. From Burgos, we turn north upon the Royal road to Santander.”
“That is nearly twice as far!”
”And we might reach the end of it alive, and you unmolested. I do not favour my odds if I have to try to fight twenty brigands for your virtue.”
She turned away from him, crossing her arms and biting her lips together. She would not, would not let him see that her eyes were stinging. It was intolerable, stupid, the evil tricks the road had flung at them thus far.
“We cannot leave for several days,” she reminded him. “That story may only be half true.”
“Half is more than I care to verify. But by all means, let us learn what we can. Meanwhile, I suppose I had better keep our mules well fed, for it seems we yet have need of them.”
She found Darcy at the edge of the square with the mules, leading them about in a cluster to stretch their legs. He raised an eyebrow. By now, she read it as an entire sentence.
“I have not been able to learn much. The village agrees that the north road is certain death. They differ only in the fashion of it — bandits, holds the washerwoman; a drowned bridge, says her boy. A few cited the story we heard last night in the common room, but they know no more of that party than we do.”
“Then it is not a villager we want,” Darcy said. “It is a survivor.”
“How enterprising. Shall I ask whether they keep any in stock?”
“There is always someone. We could try at the checkpoint north of town, ask where we might find someone lately come down from the mountains.”
“Senora?”
Elizabeth turned at an unfamiliar voice. A young lad stood before her, turning his cap in his hands. “There is an Englishman asking to see you,” he told her in Spanish.
“An Englishman? Here in Vitoria?”
“Captain Ferrers. He heard a lady was asking about the road to Bilbao, and he paid me a coin to come find you. He says it is urgent.”
She glanced at Darcy. “Take us to him.”
Captain Ferrers had a map of the north pinned to his wall with a bayonet, which Darcy thought said a good deal about the captain and rather more about the north.
He rose to greet them, extending a hand to Darcy, though his eyes had first sought Elizabeth. “Ah! Thank you for coming. Captain Ferrers, at your service.”
Darcy clasped the captain’s hand. “Fitzwilliam Darcy at yours. This is my wife, Elizabeth.” Somehow, that phrase never failed to make the back of his neck prickle and his stomach warm.
“Mr Darcy, Mrs Darcy, welcome to Vitoria. Please, have a seat. Tea?”
Darcy meant to refuse, but Elizabeth’s face brightened, so he accepted.
It seemed the captain had anticipated this, because he already had a hot kettle to hand, and in a few moments, they were situated with the most familiar thing they had seen in weeks — the simplicity of a plain, bitter tea without sugar, and a stale biscuit.
“So, what brings you to Vitoria?” Ferrers asked.
For the first time since their marriage, Darcy felt free to answer and be answered on his own terms, on footing he understood. He described the circumstances, leaving out the detail about their marriage being a paper vow only. The rest, he laid out from the beginning.
“You will be waiting six months for that bond,” the captain tsked, shaking his head. “And you will still have nothing to show for it, because Ferdinand is already bled dry.”
Darcy nodded tiredly. “I am afraid you are right. We cannot idle in town more than a week. Less, perhaps, for we hear the road north may not be safe. What do you know of that?”
Ferrers wove his fingers on his desk and tapped his thumbs together. “I would not take a woman up that road for any price. Not with a dozen troops at my back, and certainly not alone without a pistol.”
Darcy felt Elizabeth’s gaze on his cheek. “That leaves us with the road to Burgos. Sixty miles out of our way.”
“Perhaps three or four additional days of travel, yes.”
“Not with our luck.”
“Captain,” Elizabeth said, “we are also trying to learn more of what happened to my uncle. He was taken up the Encartaciones road by Don Ibarra, held against a ransom to be sent to Estella for his release. Is there any way of learning what could have become of him since we last saw him?”
The captain tipped back in his chair, then rose from it to point to his map.
He tapped the smear of mountains. “This is the Encartaciones. There is nothing left in it now but what the war spat up, and the peace has not swept away — deserters by the three armies’ worth, and men who were brigands before Bonaparte and mean to go on being brigands after him.
Not to mention a quantity of Frenchmen who have not been told they lost. A cart of prisoners from the south went into it three weeks ago. No one has come out.”
“We thought they might have retreated there so as not to be troubled by anyone who might meddle with them,” Darcy replied. “But there must be some communication with Vega, for he demanded the ransom to be sent to Estella, and so —”
“Mr Darcy, if I may… perhaps I might speak with you privately?”
He felt Elizabeth stiffen at his side, and he knew her answer before she could even open her mouth to protest. “If it is all the same, Ferrers, I think it only fair that my wife hears what you have to say. She will get it from me one way or another, and only make me pay for her impatience.”
Ferrers glanced to Elizabeth, and after some hesitation, he nodded. “I fear this will be unpleasant, but you may as well hear it. The men taken into those mountains are almost never heard from again. And if they are, it is not for any good cause.”
Elizabeth nearly jumped from her seat. “What do you mean, not for any good cause?”
Ferrers returned to his chair, folding his hands once more on the desk, and he tried offering a gentle smile, but Elizabeth was having none of it.
“Captain, what did you mean by that?”
“It means,” he said with a sigh, “that occasionally… and fairly recently… the brigands in the mountains feel their demands are not being met and so they send… mementos back. Such as a signet ring.” He paused, and his eyes went from one of them to the other. “With the finger still in it.”
Elizabeth’s fist went to her mouth, and she was suppressing a shriek. “No! We were told Ibarra was no butcher! That he only wants his money!”
“And so he does. But his men sometimes grow impatient. Or are dissatisfied with what was dispensed. I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mrs Darcy, but if you are a praying woman, you may consider praying for your uncle’s soul, for it may be too late for his body.”
She lurched to her feet. “Then someone must go after them! How are they permitted to carry on with such lawless ways? Why is this tolerated? Captain, you said you had men at your command. Let us go after him!”
Ferrers looked to Darcy, but Darcy had no help for him. He suffered from an indecent combination of Elizabeth‘s rage and Ferrers’s experience, and helplessness rose in him like bile.
“Mrs Darcy, do be reasonable,” the captain urged.
“The law is rather thin on the ground in these parts. War has left only scatterings and rumours of order. Even if I had the men to hand, which I assure you, I do not, for they are all wanted sorely at other duties, I would be quickly relieved of my command and ejected from the country for overstepping my bounds. We are suffered here by the graces of His Majesty, King Ferdinand. A troop of English soldiers marching into Basque country after a few dozen lawless men is rather a bad look.”
“I do not care about looks! My uncle was innocent. The men taken with him were innocent! Do you truly believe they will not be released when the ransom is paid?”
Ferrers thinned his lips. “I believe there may no longer be men to release, Mrs Darcy. I am sorry. Your uncle’s only hope is if he is believed to be sufficiently wealthy to fetch a handsome enough reward, that England may exert herself for him so that some live exchange will be demanded.”
“H-he was the wealthiest man in that inn… but one,” Elizabeth stammered.
“Did Vega know that?”