Naomi slipped down from Miriam’s lap and went to show her plaster to the gentlemen. Then, after a moment’s contemplation, she climbed onto Isaac’s lap and settled there. Though he looked a trifle disconcerted, Isaac’s arm went round her automatically. With perfect trust, she leaned back against his chest. Miriam decided he would make an admirable father.
Felix got down to business. “We have both asked our families about the pass, and no one knows how many guards there are, or if there is snow on the ground.”
“They never go in that direction,” Miriam said, “as Jews are not welcome in Spain.”
“So I understand. However, they also said that the village Basques, though they often cross the border, use sheep and mule paths through the mountains so they also are unlikely to know. Isaac and I are agreed that we shall reconnoitre this morning.”
She swallowed her protest. Reconnoitring was a waste of time, but they were trying to protect her and she would give them that satisfaction. If they decided the guard post presented threat enough to want to leave her and Hannah behind, then she could summon up the arguments to change their minds.
“Very well.” She hid a smile when they both looked surprised and relieved at her easy acquiescence. “I shall go and ask Joshua Cresques whether he has any patients he’d like me to examine.”
“Cresques?” Felix was astonished now. “My host last night? But he is a carpenter.”
“And bonesetter, and the nearest thing to a doctor this side of the apothecary in Laruns. Uncle Amos taught him as much as he could when we stayed here before, but I may be able to help.”
Felix and Isaac strode off up the track leading south to the pass. Miriam spent a busy morning, for in the way of small villages news of her arrival spread and several people came to consult the late Dr. Bloom’s assistant. She invited Joshua Cresques to join her and Hannah in dispensing advice and what few medicines she had with her.
She was too busy to notice the passage of time until they had to clear the table so that Sara and Naomi could set it for the noon meal. Then she realized that the men had been gone for over five hours. The border was no more than two or three miles away.
Leaving Hannah to finish clearing up, she went out and gazed up the road. Though she had to shade her eyes against the sun, a few hundred feet away a mist was creeping across the track.
“How long has it been misty?” she asked Simeon, who was digging in the vegetable garden.
He joined her. “Not long. Sometimes it blows down very fast. If you like, I’ll walk up that way and call to them.”
“Will you? Thank you.”
He set off and she went back into the house, worried.
Not five minutes later, she heard him calling breathlessly, “Aunt Miriam! Aunt Miriam!”
She went to the door. He bounded down the track towards her, his face a mixture of horror and excitement.
“What is it? What has happened?”
“They’re coming. Uncle Isaac is carrying Uncle Felix, and Uncle Felix is all bloody!”
Isaac staggered out of the mist.
Chapter 19
“He’s dislocated his right shoulder.” Miriam was amazed at how steady her voice was. She looked over at Isaac, slumped white-faced and exhausted by the fire, a mug of hot soup cradled in his hands. “There would have been much more damage if you had not thought to bind his arm to his side.”
“But then I had nothing to bind his head.”
She turned back to Felix. They had laid his unconscious body on a pile of quilts on the kitchen table. If Isaac’s face was white, his was grey, now that Hannah had cleaned off the blood.
“The head wound is not serious, they always bleed a great deal. But he has concussion. Has he come round at all since he fell?”
“I don’t think so. He was a dead weight all the way down.”
“I cannot imagine how you managed to carry him, but that is probably a good sign. Uncle Amos said the worst cases seem to be those where the patient rouses and then loses consciousness again. Joshua, you had best try to reduce the dislocation before he wakes.”
His calloused thumb remarkably gentle, the sturdy carpenter pulled back one of Felix’s eyelids. “He’s out good and proper,” he grunted, “but be ready to hold him down. It’s a painful business.”
Miriam knew it, and also that the manipulation was bound to further injure torn and bruised tissue, but it had to be done.
“God willing, the poor lad won’t feel it,” said Hannah. “May God grant him health.”
Felix did not stir while Joshua forced his arm back into its socket. Miriam and Hannah anointed with arnica and witch hazel the frightful swelling and bruising of his shoulder and the many other bruises and scrapes he had sustained in his slide down a scree slope. Then Isaac and Joshua carried him up the narrow stairs, his arm immobilized, his head bandaged, and put him to bed in the boys’ tiny chamber.
When the men came down to the kitchen Hannah went up to sit with Felix. Joshua trudged off home to tell the Abravanels their kitchen was once more their own. Isaac took Miriam’s hands in his.
“Will he recover?”
“I cannot like it that he has been so long insensible, but all I can do is keep him still and warm. I hate it when there is nothing to be done but wait. And his arm... I’m afraid... Sometimes the shoulder never heals fully, never regains its strength, and Felix is so....” The words caught in her throat.
Isaac enfolded her in his arms. She leaned her head against his chest and took comfort from his quiet strength.
They heard the children’s voices outside and stepped apart. For a moment Miriam felt chilled and bereft. Then Sara appeared in the doorway and asked, wide-eyed, “Is Uncle Felix dead?”
“No, silly.” Aaron arrived behind her and gave her a push. “Uncle Joshua would have told us.”
“Hush, children.” Esther came in and embraced Miriam. “How is the poor young man? My dear, remember that my house is your house.”
Miriam hugged her. “I fear we shall need to take advantage of your kindness. I must go up and see that he is as comfortable as possible.”
She had scarcely set foot on the bottom stair when Hannah called.
“Miss Miriam, he’s waking up.”
She reached the bedside as he opened his eyes, hazy and unfocussed. He attempted to change his position and a groan rose to his lips. Miriam leaned over the bed and laid one gentle but firm hand on his left shoulder.
“Keep still, Felix. You are hurt.”
A travesty of a grin twisted his mouth. “I guessed as much,” he mumbled. “What happened?”
“You fell on the mountain. Isaac carried you back to the village. You have a dislocated shoulder and concussion, and I dare not give you enough laudanum to make you sleep, though you can have a few drops to dull the pain.”
“Not yet. Must discuss... Where is Isaac?”
“Tomorrow will be time enough for discussions.”
“Today. Wellington’s gold....” He closed his eyes, a tiny wrinkle of pain between his fair brows, but when she began to move he gripped her hand. “Today.”
“Hannah, ask Isaac to come up, please.”
Meeting Isaac at the door, she said in a low voice, “He will not rest easy until we have made plans. Do not argue with him now, I beg of you.”
He nodded, frowning, and stepped forward to stand by the bed. Felix opened his eyes, clearer now.
“I’m sick as a dog, old fellow. You’ll have to go on without me. Good people here...take care of me.”
“I fear you are right, we cannot afford to waste any more time. We ought to leave tomorrow. You will be safe here until we return.”
“Never thought...trust you with all that gold. Now...trust you with my life.” He raised his left hand and Isaac grasped it. “No good way to say thank you, is there?”
“We’ll take it as said. You must rest now.”
Felix’s arm dropped back onto the quilt and his eyes closed again, his face turning slightly green. “Gad, ...feel devilish.”
“Isaac, tell Hannah to bring the sal volatile and the laudanum,” Miriam ordered. “Felix, are you going to cast up your accounts?”
“Don’t think so. Touch and go for a moment.”
“Well, for pity’s sake don’t be too bashful to give us warning.”
He managed a crooked smile. “Never been called bashful before.”
Like a docile child he swallowed his medicine. Hannah stayed with him, and Miriam went down to talk to Isaac. There was one thing she had to make perfectly clear and she wasn’t sure how he was going to take it. She didn’t want an audience, so she suggested stepping outside for a breath of fresh air.
They stood side by side, leaning on a gate, watching the carriage horses grazing among a half dozen sheep and a long-eared mule. The sun was warm; above a belt of dark green pines on the far side of the meadow, the snow gleamed blinding white on the rampart of peaks ranging east and west into the distance. Overhead a vulture circled lazily, black against the pale blue sky.
Miriam laced her fingers together. She was not wearing gloves, and despite the sun her hands were cold. Or was the cold internal?
“Isaac, I cannot go with you. I must stay to nurse Felix.”
He stiffened and for a moment was perfectly still. Then he said in a voice of calm deliberation, “Esther, Joshua, the others will look after him.”
“He needs more expert care than they can give. If his shoulder is not treated correctly, it could develop permanent stiffness. Nor can I be sure as yet how serious the head injury is. I cannot leave him.”
“But I....”
“We shall find a Basque guide. You would have to have someone to help you drive in any case. Isaac, you are perfectly capable of reaching Pamplona on your own, even of finding General Wellington, wherever he may be. Felix was forced on you by the British Government; I was forced on you by Jakob Rothschild. You never really needed either of us.”
“No!” The word could have been agreement, but it sounded more like a cry of despair.
Miriam continued quickly, before her voice broke. “Nathan Rothschild entrusted this mission to you, and it is vital to England. You must go on. I must stay.”
The two French border guards, huddled in their stone hut atop the Col du Pourtalet, were quite satisfied with Petye Uriarte’s tale, backed as it was by two bottles of Felix’s cognac. It was none of their business if some mad Spanish grandee wanted to purchase a rather shabby berline in France and hire a couple of men to drive it home for him. They shrugged, raised the bottles in salute, and waved the driver on before hurrying back to the comparative comfort of their meagre fire.
Isaac had little leisure to contemplate the success of his ploy. Whether he was driving or perched behind wielding the skid pan and safety chain, the road demanded all his attention. He was glad of the occupation--it kept his mind from Miriam.
The track zigzagged down the mountain, usually with a precipice on one side, sometimes on both sides, falling sheer to ravening torrents hundreds of feet below. In places the track itself turned into a stream; in others, rock falls necessitated terrifying detours. Fortunately Petye, though he had never before driven anything but a donkey cart, took to the reins like a scion of the English nobility.
A small, dark, round-faced Basque in his early twenties, who sang as he drove, he had been suggested as a guide by Aaron Abravanel.
“The grown-ups won’t talk about it,” the boy told Isaac, “but everyone knows Petye’s a smuggler, and he wants to join the guerrilleros in Spain.”
“Guerilleros?”
“They are bands of men fighting the emperor’s army, not proper soldiers with uniforms just people who hate Bonaparte. He tries to make the Basques obey his laws when they have perfectly good laws of their own, like us Jews. Can I come with you too?”
Aaron, disappointed, was left behind, but Petye had eagerly agreed to guide Isaac to Pamplona. Though his native language was Basque, he claimed to speak Spanish almost as well as he did French. And when Isaac refused to explain why he insisted on taking an apparently empty carriage rather than a much faster mule, instead of asking awkward questions Petye slyly winked. Isaac was glad to have him.
They came down safely out of the high mountains, spent the second night at Sabiñánigo, and in the morning turned westward. Though the road was still bad enough to require the driver’s concentration, the brakes were only needed occasionally. Isaac’s thoughts flew back across the Pyrenees to the village of St.-Jean-d’Ossau.
Miriam believed in his competence; her faith in him was a flame that burned steadily in his heart. He clung to the memory of her slender figure beside him in the sunshine, the warm suppleness in his arms... no, he must not think of that. She had chosen to stay with Felix.
How would she have finished that sentence: “Felix is so....”? So vigorous, so full of life? So handsome? So--virile?
The possibility tortured him. For all her unfeminine decisiveness, Miriam was utterly female, and women had their physical needs as much as men. Under Jewish law, a husband was expected to provide his wife with sexual gratification. He had never supposed that Miriam’s response to his embrace, and to Felix’s, meant that she was a shameless slut, but that she needed a husband. That was, after all, one reason why early marriage was a Jewish custom.
Her family had proposed an early marriage for her. She had rejected it--rejected him--out of hand. Did she now want Felix? He could not forget that she had torn herself angrily from his kisses whereas only his interruption had ended Felix’s caress.
And now she had chosen to stay with Felix. She loved Felix.
Isaac wondered whether she realized how unlikely it was that the heir to an earldom should take for his bride the daughter of a Jewish Cit, however wealthy, even if he loved her. If he offered for her hand, his family would fight the marriage tooth and nail. Apart from other considerations, the Roworths blamed a Jew for their ruin, though Felix seemed to have overcome his prejudice to some extent.
To the extent that he would propose to Miriam? And if he did not, and Isaac proposed, would she accept him despite loving Felix? Or would she once again reject him?
He shuddered at the thought.