Page 71 of Homeless

“We have made him agree to send a boy to look. It is not the same thing.” She turned from the doorway at last. “But it is more than we had this morning.”

They went out into the street. “How long can we stay?” she asked.

He thought of the money. The little that was left of it, the mules he could either keep feeding or sell, and the trouble that seemed to follow them. The note on Pemberley, coming due before September was out. The woman at his side, the one whose uncle had solemnly charged him to see safely to England, as soon as possible. “Not as long as it will take.”

XXVII

The North Road

“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.

The north road was a thing every soul in the village held a view on, and most of them did not agree. Darcy had caught the first hints that their road to Bilbao might not be passable when he saw the stained and tattered travellers coming into their venta late one evening, very much put out and making a deal of noise about some wrong done them. They were the subject of some curiosity, so he had gone upstairs to bring Elizabeth down from her toilette to hear them and translate what was being said.

“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.”