Nothing Saved #2
They went straight to Captain Ferrers first. He was politely astonished when Darcy explained what they would be asking of him, swore he would see it done, and wished them safe passage on their journey home.
And then, his gaze passing from one of them to the other, he asked if they were well.
Elizabeth had been holding herself stiffly since dawn, but she blinked in surprise when the captain noticed.
Indeed, she was not well. Her head throbbed from too much wine, her stomach was still knotted after their argument, her back and legs ached from…
she refused to acknowledge from what… and walking inflamed the tenderness in certain parts of her body that she would be hanged before she would confess.
Darcy looked little better, save for the bit about walking making him sore. Twice this morning, she had caught him kneading his temples, and once, he had clutched his stomach as if last night’s sour wine still nauseated him.
“Perfectly well,” Darcy answered the captain. “We leave Vitoria within the hour.”
Ferrers glanced once more at Elizabeth, and his brow furrowed as his eyes took in the dutifully preserved space between her body and Darcy’s.
“Forgive me. It is only that Mrs Darcy appears… somewhat diminished today. Much travel, especially in the heat of summer, can be a burden on a lady’s constitution.
You would not be the first of our countrymen to suffer illness in this part of the world. ”
“It was only some bad wine I had last night,” Elizabeth said promptly.
“Nothing a proper meal and a bit of rest will not set right, but Mr Darcy is correct that we cannot afford to remain in Vitoria. I mean to wear my bonnet on the road and drink as often as the mules do, and I shall be perfectly well by tomorrow.”
The captain nodded, but Elizabeth was sure that he raised one eyebrow faintly at Darcy. “Very well. Before you go, let me show you your way, and offer what advice I can for the journey.”
“Yes, about that,” Darcy said. “My salvoconducto states that our road is the Encartaciones. Will there be any trouble about taking another route?”
“I doubt half the men checking those even read the route, but I will give you a letter, in case you are stopped. It should go some way towards proper appearances. See here.”
He pulled a map from his drawer and used a dry pen to note their path — south and west first, down onto the meseta toward Burgos.
It ran away from the sea they both wanted, and they would have to climb the Montes de Vitoria.
Then they would come to fortified Miranda, where they would have to cross the Ebro once more before the land would open and drop them into the Meseta Norte below.
From there, the captain said, it would be rolling and parched. Easy enough travel, but exposed and dry, with only a few wells dug and very few natural streams. But they were well enough used, the road being heavily travelled and nearly always marked by some sort of venta or posada.
Darcy thanked the captain, Elizabeth smiled at him and let him kiss her hand, and they bade him farewell.
There were the mules to see to, and fresh provisions to buy and pack, and the remains of their coins to count out and be rationed.
Darcy sold his trunk, the specially designed rich man’s travelling trunk with the false bottom that had saved his papers from theft and carried what remained of their clothes, pressed together, since Estella.
It made more sense, they agreed with perhaps four words between them, to load the pack mule with canvas bags over his saddle and their clothes and papers and food stuffed inside, the way the arrieros did.
There was a checkpoint at the town's edge, where a bored teniente read their salvoconducto and their marriage certificate, glanced briefly at their faces, and waved them through.
They spoke perhaps a dozen words the whole way out, and every one of them was about the mules, or the road, or the town where they would stop that night.
Never once did anything personal pass between them, and Elizabeth was grateful, particularly on this jostling mountain road, that they each had their own mule to ride and did not have to share a narrow seat in a cart.
She sat in the mule’s saddle with her arms crossed and her face turned to the country going by.
It was better than staring at Darcy’s broad back as he rode ahead of her.
Better than remembering the feel of that back under her palms, the sound of his breath faltering against her ear, the strength of his body as he…
She clenched her eyes and her jaw and stared at the mountains ringing the distance.
They stopped in the afternoon to rest the mules, and Darcy came towards her to help her down.
Elizabeth dismounted without help just before he reached her, and he stopped, held up a hand in surrender, and went to untie their provisions from the pack mule’s saddle.
He brought her back a heel of bread and some cheese — a luxury she had argued they should not have purchased for the road — and offered it to her without a word.
A moment later, he returned with a skin of water, and that, too, he deposited in her keeping without conversation.
Elizabeth had never been given to much wine.
Last night was certainly an excess, and the wine had been foul to begin with, but she had naively hoped that her head would have stopped aching by now.
Instead, it had seemed to grow worse, piercing behind her eyes.
She was pressing the tender spots in the centre of her forehead, just above her nose, when Darcy returned to help her back into the saddle.
“The altitude,” he said, when he saw her trying to massage her forehead. “The air is thin.”
“Of course,” she said as she got to her feet. “I can manage,” she added, when he held out a hand to help her into the saddle. The last thing she wanted was to refresh the memory of his hands on her.
“Suit yourself.” He turned away, and they did not speak again for three hours.