The Spanish Marriage (7 page)

At last, clutching nervously at her handkerchief and carrying
the fullness of her skirt over one arm, Thea went in to Silvy.

When her duenna began to weep—silent racking sobs—Thea
dropped her skirts and knelt; she was heedless of the clean muslin and put her
arms around Silvy. There was something in the quality of those tears that
frightened Thea, as there was in the way that Silvy’s thin, tired hands clutched
at the skirt of the wedding dress and stroked Thea’s face. For ten
minutes Thea sat, arms about Silvy’s shoulders, neither saying a word,
the older woman weeping while the younger sat, helpless.

Finally Silvy pulled away and made a pretense at daubing at
her tears. “It is time for you to go down to the Chapel and say a prayer
before Mass,
hija.”
She pushed Thea’s arm away and made her
stand up. “Go on. And Dorotea?” Her eyes filmed over again but she
did not cry. “You know you have my blessing in this. This life....”
She made a small, inclusive gesture with one hand. “This is a good life
for a woman, if it is the right life for her,
niña.
God put woman on
Earth—you must take the chance—if you are lucky, someday you will
be a mother, as I never was, except to you!” The tears began again. Thea
only half attended: the bells had begun to ring, summoning the community to Mass
and herself to be married. Silvy was saying something important, but Thea had
not the attention to understand it now.

“I’ll be good, Silvy, I promise I will,”
she mumbled finally, the old promise of her schoolroom days. Silvy looked at
her charge and smiled now, a little grimly.

“Of course you will,
niña.
Are you not
Ibañez-de Silva? And Cannowen,” she added before Thea could do so. “Go
on. Sister Scholastica will help me down to the Chapel.”

Of the wedding itself Thea remembered little later: bits of the
Mass; the color of the sun on brass candlesticks that glowed on the altar; the
soft rustle of the nuns’ habits as they knelt and stood and knelt again;
Mother Beatriz’s smile when she brought her to the altar; Matlin’s
long, pale face and the cool touch of his hand when he took hers. Father
Anselmo prompted their responses; she heard her own voice and Matlin’s.
Then, as simply as that, they were married.

Under the appreciative eyes of the Sisters, Silvy, the townspeople,
Matlin bent and kissed Thea, a quick, fleeting touch, then tucked her hand into
his arm and led her from the church. She realized then that she had been
trembling.
Married.
I am truly married, she thought. Under her lashes
she looked sideways at Matlin, but before she could savor the idea Silvy was
there, and the nuns, each demanding an embrace before they went to the
breakfast that had been laid in the courtyard.

An hour later, when they had eaten as much as they could,
Matlin murmured something to the Mother Superior.

“Yes, you are right,” she replied. “Dorotea,
it is time that you changed into your travelling clothes.”

Thea was bundled away for the last time to the small, cool cell
in the guest house, to dress in a full, dark skirt and jacket, the shawl about
her shoulders ready to be placed over her pale, curling hair. The rest of her
peasant clothes and her own small pile of belongings had been wrapped securely
in another shawl and her English gowns distributed to the girls in the village.
She carried her bundles down the stairs and stepped into the white midday light
of the courtyard. Matlin was securing parcels and a basket filled with cheese,
sausage, beans, and bread to one of the two mules they had been given.

“You’ll want to make your farewells.” He
sauntered off to chat with Manuel. Turning to face Silvy, Mother Beatriz, the
other women with whom she had lived for almost four months, Thea was
speechless. There was a flurry of embraces, a few words from Mother Beatriz,
and a final embrace from Silvy, who seemed able only to murmur distractedly.
Thea thought how thin Silvy had grown, so insubstantial it seemed as if she
were hardly there at all. “Make sure they take care of you, Silvy,”
she said fiercely.

“Me?
You
be careful, Dorotea, and make sure
that man does nothing dangerous while you are travelling. I want you safe. Be
happy.”

“I will...” Thea began.

“Señorita Cannowen,” Matlin called to her. “We
must start. I hope to reach Segovia tonight. After that,” he cast a
general look of apology at the crowd, “perhaps safer for us all if you do
not know what our route is.”

“Sensible.” Mother Beatriz took Thea’s
hands in her own and kissed her forehead. “Blessings. Go with God.”

“I will, Mother. Take care of Silvy for me. I’ll
write when we are safe home. And Mother, thank you. I never....”

Matlin made a noise of impatience and the Mother Superior
pushed Thea away with a smile.

Just before the road twisted Thea turned her head for a last
look behind at the convent. They stood in a cluster: Silvy, tall and narrow and
pinched-faced beside Mother Beatriz’s shorter, more substantial form,
other nuns, indistinguishable at a distance. They waved and Thea raised her
hand in a final salute. When she could not see any more she turned her eyes
forward to the road for Segovia. It was not yet noon of her wedding day.

o0o

They rode without speaking. That morning Thea had wished for
a few minutes to think, to catch hold of all the notions which had run through
her mind since she awakened; now there was nothing but the slip-slap of
blankets against the mules’ sides to distract her; she had all the time
in the world to think, but her mind was empty. Every now and then something
would pass through her mind: Father Anselmo’s broad smile as he
pronounced them man and wife; Silvy’s white, agitated face; the sweet
dusty tang of the convent wine drunk at their wedding toast. Nothing made sense
to her. After a time Thea gave herself up to the drowsy rhythm of the
mules’ trot and concentrated on nothing but keeping her seat.

Later, when they stopped to eat, Matlin commented on it. “You’ve
been uncommonly silent this morning, quite unlike yourself.” He tore a
piece of bread from the loaf in his hand and offered it to her. “You’re
not afraid of me, are you, child?”

“Afraid?” she echoed. You’ve been silent
too, she thought, but, “I’ve never been married before,” she
told him. “It’s a lot to think about.”

Matlin laughed briefly but with amusement. “No more
have I; I suppose it does give one food for thought. You know, I am aware that
this cannot be all easy for you. You will miss Doña Clara, the Sisters. If you
want to talk, if I can help, I’d like to.”

Startled, a little undone by this kindness, Thea took refuge
in a quick retort. “I’m not the one with a great gash in my head;
so long as you don’t faint away from the sun I’m sure I will be
perfectly happy.”

Matlin smiled again, finished up his bread and the spicy
sausage he had smeared on it, and began to pack the hamper up again. Striving
for some dignity Thea picked herself up from her perch on a downed tree.
Child,
she thought irritably. That word again.... I’m your wife! I’ll
make you forget that word if it’s the last thing I do.

“Are you ready? I’ll help you up,” he
offered, leading her mule over. Thea wished that she could refuse his help, tell
him she could manage very nicely without it, but that seemed childish too. She
let him swing her up and sat astride the mule’s back, running her hand
along the bristling mouse-brown neck. “Señorita, shall we?” Matlin
urged, gesturing with a flourish toward the road.

“Señora,” she retorted, and prodded the mule
forward.

o0o

For the rest of the afternoon, if they were out of earshot
of other travellers, Matlin kept up a stream of nonsense in his patchy Spanish,
as much for practice as to amuse his companion. At first Thea refused ostentatiously
to be amused, but when he committed a truly horrendous error in pronunciation
she corrected him loftily and after that found it impossible to maintain her
starchy facade. Then they chattered together as they had in his sickroom. Only
when they passed other travellers or neared a town or farmhouse did they fall
silent of one accord.

Each mile made them more aware of the difference between
what they were in truth and what they pretended to be, and between the serenity
of the countryside and the upheaval caused by the French troops. Once they
passed a small encampment; even at a distance Thea could recognize that these
were not Spanish, but French soldiers, boisterously noisy. The peasants they
met near the encampment had an edgy, suspicious manner. After that neither
Matlin nor Thea said anything for some time.

They passed Segovia before dusk and Matlin began to look for
an inn. As darkness fell he thought increasingly of the awkwardness of their
situation; it was not an aspect of the journey he had considered before. The
girl understood about a marriage in form he assumed; the women must have explained
all to her. However, to think up a plausible story for an innkeeper,
particularly in his imperfect Spanish, was a task at which he quailed.

No explanations were necessary. They stopped at the next
posada,
a ramshackle three-room hut of a place richly scented with cooking odors,
the smells of the stable behind it, and the ripe smell of human bodies seldom
bathed. There was room, he was assured, and their food would be prepared for
them by the landlord’s wife; the mules would be stabled and fed. But the
accommodations, as the landlord explained, were of the simplest kind, a
dormitory for the men, one for the women, and a tiny room behind where he and
his wife slept. Was this agreeable to the señor?

Matlin breathed a sigh of relief and assured the innkeeper the
arrangements were wholly satisfactory.

He did not think to explain the matter to Thea when he brought
her inside. After they had supped on more of the rich sausage the nuns had
provided and on some eggs bought from the landlady and cooked by her in oil and
garlic, Thea was surprised to find herself handed into the woman’s
custody.

“You are lucky tonight, Señora, only one other woman guest
here; so you will have a bed to yourself,” the landlady clucked
complacently as she steered Thea along a short hallway.

“But my husband,” Thea protested.

“Sleeps with the men,” the landlady finished
firmly. “Do you think this is a rich, grand
fonda
with a room for
each guest?” Her smile was narrow but sympathetic. “You are newly
wed,
niña?”

Child.
Thea sighed inwardly. “Married this
morning, Señora,” she admitted gravely. The least Matlin could have done,
she was thinking irritably, was to have said good night to her.

“Married today?
Diós,
Señora, what are you
doing travelling on your wedding day? Is your husband mad? Are your family mad?”
The landlady clucked sadly. “What a start to your marriage! Terrible,
what an omen.” She pushed Thea before her into a dark, boxy room that
held three broad straw-filled pallets and a collection of disreputable
blankets. Thea clutched the blanket she carried with her gratefully and tried
to decide which of the pallets looked the least objectionable.

The landlady was still muttering behind her: “Married
today,
ai,
what a thing. Señora, wait, I beg you. I have a thought.”
The woman turned and disappeared, skirts swinging officiously.

Thea waited.

Five minutes later, as she eyed the pallets ruefully, the
landlady reappeared. “I have solved everything,” she announced
happily. Pushing Thea before her out of the room and toward the kitchen she
explained. “My husband is a good man, Señora, although he hardly looks
it, I know.” Thea had privately put him down as a rogue, in fact. “I
spoke with him, and we are agreed: you and your husband shall have our room
tonight. Ramon will sleep in the men’s room tonight, and I in the women’s.”

It was clearly a sacrifice too magnanimous to be refused, even
had she wished to do. Thea thanked the woman sincerely and led the way back to
the kitchen past the open door of the men’s room, where one figure was
already sprawled on a straw mattress and snoring drunkenly. The first words she
heard as she crossed the threshold into the kitchen were Matlin’s.

“It is not possible,” he was saying.

It took more than a moment for Thea to understand that he
was refusing the gesture and insisting that they could not possibly turn their
hosts from their room. It was obvious to her that he was not arguing from
politeness, but out of conviction.

“
Mi esposo,”
she began urgently, her hand
on his sleeve. It was the first time she had called him husband. The look Matlin
gave her was not one of gratification; it was impatient and resentful. If these
people truly wished to make the sacrifice, she thought, it was hardly civil to
refuse.
“Mi esposo, “
she began again.

He shook her hand off his arm angrily.
“Cállete,”
he commanded between his teeth. Be quiet. Then, to the innkeeper he said
slowly, “It is not possible. I....” He looked off into the air for
a moment, trying to find the words. “I took a vow to the Virgin. Until we
reach my wife’s relatives....” He shrugged. At the fireside table
one of their fellow travellers chuckled ribaldly, and Thea felt herself blush.

The innkeeper nodded, puzzled but satisfied. The landlady, a
little wiser than her husband, stalked off muttering of unnatural promises and
poor children abandoned on their wedding days. The other guests turned their
attention to food and wine and ignored the young couple pointedly.

“A vow?” Thea said, “I don’t
understand.”

“Go to sleep,” Matlin said urgently. “You
must be tired. We can talk in the morning.” He patted her shoulder
awkwardly, then turned away toward the door. “I’m going to get a
breath of air.”

The landlord frowned at Thea. “Do as your husband
suggests, Señora. It’s hard enough for a man to keep any vow without a
disobedient wife to plague him.”