“We have no sugar, sir,” said the maid apologetically.
“It doesn’t matter,” answered Hornblower, sipping thirstily.
“It is a pity the poor wounded officer has to travel,” she went on. “These wars are terrible.”
She had a snub nose and a wide mouth and big black eyes — no one could call her attractive, but the sympathy in her voice was grateful to a man who was a prisoner. Brown was propping up Bush’s shoulders and holding a bowl to his lips. He took two or three sips and turned his head away. The coach rocked as two men scrambled up on to the box.
“Stand away, there!” roared the sergeant.
The coach lurched and rolled and wheeled round out of the gates, the horses’ hoofs clattering loud on the cobbles, and the last Hornblower saw of the maid was the slight look of consternation on her face as she realized that she had lost the breakfast tray for good.
The road was bad, judging by the way the coach lurched; Hornblower heard a sharp intake of breath from Bush at one jerk. He remembered what the swollen and inflamed stump of Bush’s leg looked like; every jar must be causing him agony. He moved up the seat to the stretcher and caught Bush’s hand.
“Don’t you worry yourself, sir,” said Bush. “I’m all right.” Even while he spoke Hornblower felt him grip tighter as another jolt caught him unexpectedly.
“I’m sorry, Bush,” was all he could say; it was hard for the captain to speak at length to the lieutenant on such personal matters as his regret and unhappiness.
“We can’t help it, sir,” said Bush, forcing his peaked features into a smile.
That was the main trouble, their complete helplessness. Hornblower realized that there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do. The leather-scented stuffiness of the coach was already oppressing him, and he realized with horror that they would have to endure this jolting prison of theirs for another twenty days, perhaps, before they should reach Paris. He was restless and fidgety at the thought of it, and perhaps his restlessness communicated itself by contact to Bush, who gently withdrew his hand and turned his head to one side, leaving his captain free to fidget within the narrow confines of the coach.
Still there were glimpses of the sea to be caught on one side, and of the Pyrenees on the other. Putting his head out of the window Hornblower ascertained that their escort was diminished to-day. Only two troopers rode ahead of the coach, and four clattered behind at the heels of Caillard’s horse. Presumably their entry into France made any possibility of a rescue far less likely. Standing thus, his head awkwardly protruding through the window, was less irksome than sitting in the stuffiness of the carriage. There were the vineyards and the stubble field to be seen, and the swelling heights of the Pyrenees receding into the blue distance. There were people, too — nearly all women, Hornblower noted — who hardly looked up from their hoeing to watch the coach and its escort bowling along the road. Now they were passing a party of uniformed soldiers — recruits and convalescents, Hornblower guessed, on their way to their units in Catalonia — shambling along the road more like sheep than soldiers. The young officer at their head saluted the glitter of the star on Caillard’s chest and eyed the coach curiously at the same time.
Strange prisoners had passed along that road before him; Alvarez, the heroic defender of Gerona, who died on a wheelbarrow — the only bed granted him — in a dungeon on his way to trial, and Toussaint 1’Ouverture, the Negro hero of Hayti, kidnapped from his sunny island and sent to die, inevitably, of pneumonia in a rocky fortress in the Jura; Palafox of Zaragoza, young Mina from Navarre — all victims of the tyrant’s Corsican rancour. He and Bush would only be two more items in a list already notable. D’Enghien who had been shot in Vincennes six years ago was of the blood-royal, and his death had caused a European sensation, but Bonaparte had murdered plenty more. Thinking of all those who had preceded him made Hornblower gaze more yearningly from the carriage window, and breathe more deeply of the free air.