Read Online The Spanish Marriage by Madeleine Robins - Free Book Online Page A

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