Free The Spanish Marriage by Madeleine Robins Page A

directly.
“Have you seen my husband, a young man so tall, in a blue jacket and
black trousers....” Surely there must be some way to describe him without
drawing suspicion. Then, with the memory of Matlin’s sudden, frightening
dizziness as her inspiration, Thea had her plan, just in time to try her story
on two approaching foot soldiers. They were very drunk and looked at her
owlishly when she began her distracted wailing.
    “Sirs, please, Señores, have you seen my husband, my Miguel?”
A touch of the shrew, a touch of Silvy’s worried tone, the edgy humility
of the wife of Manuel in the convent village. “Please, sirs, have you
seen him? This tall, with a blue jacket that my mother made, God rest her soul....”
She crossed herself and rattled on in Spanish, watching them as carefully as
she dared. They were amused by her; that was easily seen, but she suspected
they understood very little of what she said.
    “Sposo? Sposo?” One of them echoed her.
Then, in French, “Come here, darling, give us a kiss.”
    Panicked, Thea drew back. It had never occurred to her that
anyone would accost her. Again, invoking the Virgin and all the saints she
could recall, she begged for news of her husband. “Since the mule kicked
him, Señores, Miguel has been, you know? A little funny in the head. Says
things no one can understand....” That, in case Matlin had been captured
and made some sort of slip into English. She prayed, in that case, that none of
the soldiers understood English.
    Neither of the men were interested in Miguel, but the nearer
of them reached an arm out for Thea and pawed her shoulder heavily. She
struggled backward with a stifled shriek, frightened in earnest now.
    “What’s the noise? Paul, Edouard? What’s
she bawling about?” From a brightly lit doorway a fat uniformed figure
lumbered toward them. “¿Que es el problema?” he asked
laboriously. With a sigh Thea began her tale again, of Miguel and his poor,
mule-addled wits.
    “He told me to mind the mules, Señor, then—nothing!
Me, I am a good wife; I do what I am told, but he has been gone so long, I was
afraid. Señor, when his head hurts he becomes so strange, for the love of God
and all the saints in heaven, have you seen him, please?”
    “A crazy man, you say? In a blue jacket? Edouard, what
of the fool that fell down at Emile’s feet. He wore a blue jacket, didn’t
he?”
    While Thea struggled to hide her impatience the sergeant and
his two drunken men debated whether or not the imbecile they had taken in for
questioning could be the man she sought.
    At last, “Señora, best you come with me and see, eh?”
The sergeant put a meaty arm out to her in a gesture of courtliness; he reeked
of garlic and sweat, and Thea was glad to have the distance of the mules
between them as they went. She kept up her stream of distracted chatter and fretted
over what would happen to her if she lost her man. “A good husband until
the accident, I swear, and even now when the pain is not bad.” They went
round the side of the posada, from which raucous singing still issued,
and back to a tiny shack illuminated by a single tin lantern.
    “Well, Señora? Is this your husband?” The
sergeant leaned unnecessarily close to push the door open for her, and there,
sullenly crouched into a corner on a pile of straw, was Matlin. Quickly, so as
to give him no time to slip and destroy her beautiful fiction, Thea rushed into
the room, babbling her thanks to the sergeant, to Providence, and to the
entirety of the occupying forces which had taken pity on her addlewitted
spouse. Then, dropping to her knees before him, hoping that she would block any
sign of astonishment on his face from the sergeant’s sight, she began to
alternate apology with wifely abuse. “Don’t you know me? Miguel, I
was so worried! You go wandering and getting into trouble, and now we shall
never reach my uncle’s house, and the wedding is tomorrow....”
    Turning again to begin her litany