“Everything is there?” Bautista demanded. “Nothing is missing?”
It was then that Sharpe realized one thing was missing: the portrait of Napoleon. Harper’s small silver thimble, duly polished, was in one of the bags, but not the silver-framed portrait of the Emperor. Sharpe opened his mouth to report the loss, then abruptly closed it as he considered that the portrait’s absence could be a trap. Bautista was evidently obsessed with Napoleon, which made it very likely that the
Captain-General had himself purloined the signed portrait. Nor, Sharpe decided, was the loss of the portrait important. It was a mere
souvenir
, as the French said, and Lieutenant Colonel Charles could always write and request another such keepsake. Sharpe also had a strong suspicion that if he mentioned the missing picture, Bautista might refuse to issue the travel permits and so, without considering the matter further, Sharpe shook his head. “Nothing is missing, Your Excellency.”
Bautista smiled as though Sharpe had said the right thing, then, still smiling, he clicked his fingers again, this time summoning a squad of infantrymen who escorted two prisoners. The prisoners, in drab brown clothes, had their wrists and ankles manacled. The chains scraped and jangled as the two men were forced to the room’s center.
“These are the thieves,” Bautista announced.
Sharpe stared at the two men. They were both black-haired, both had moustaches, and both were terrified. Sharpe tried to remember the face of the man who had aimed the carbine at him, and in his memory that man had sported a much bigger moustache than either of these prisoners, but he could not be certain.
“What do you do,” Bautista asked, “with thieves in your country?”
“Imprison them,” Sharpe said, “or maybe transport them to Australia.”
“How merciful! No wonder you still have thieves. In Chile we have better ways to deter scum.” Bautista turned to the fire, drew a big handkerchief from his uniform pocket, then wrapped the handkerchief around the metal handle of what Sharpe had supposed to be a long poker jammed into the basket grate. It was not a poker, but rather a branding iron. Bautista jerked it free of the coals and Sharpe saw the letter
L
, for
ladron
, glowing at its tip.
“No!
Señor!
No!” The nearest thief twisted back, but two soldiers gripped him hard by the arms, and a third stood behind the man to hold his head steady.
“The punishment for a first offense is a branding. For the second offense it is death,” Bautista said, then he held the brand high and close to the thief’s forehead, close enough for the man to feel its radiant heat. Bautista hesitated, smiling, and it seemed to Sharpe that the whole room held its breath. Colonel Ruiz turned away. The elegant Marquinez went pale.
“No!” the man screamed, then Bautista pushed the brand forward and the scream soared high and terrible. There was a sizzling sound, a flash of flame as the man’s greasy hair briefly flared with fire, then the big room filled with the smell of burning flesh. Bautista held the brand on the man’s skin even as the thief collapsed.
The iron was pushed back into the coals as the second man was hauled forward. That second man looked at Sharpe. “
Señor
, I beg you! It was not us! Not us!”
“Your Excellency!” Sharpe called.
“If I were in England,” Bautista jiggled the iron in the fire, “would you think it proper for me to interfere with English justice? This is Chile, Mister Sharpe, not England. Justice here is what I say it is, and I treat thieves with the certain cure of pain. Exquisite pain!” He pulled the brand free, turned and aimed the bright letter at the second man.
“God save Ireland,” Harper said softly beside Sharpe. Most of the audience looked shocked. One uniformed man had gone to a window and was leaning across the wide stone sill. Bautista, though, was enjoying himself. Sharpe could see it in the dark eyes. The second man screamed, and again there was the hiss of burning skin and the stink of flesh cooking, and then the second man, like the first, had the big
L
branded forever on his forehead.
“Take them away,” Bautista commanded as he tossed the branding iron into the fireplace, then turned and stared defiantly at Sharpe. The Captain-General looked tired, as though all the joy of his morning had suddenly evaporated. “Your request to travel to Puerto Crucero and recover the body of Don Blas Vivar is granted. Captain Marquinez will issue you with the necessary permits, and you will leave Valdivia tomorrow. That finishes today’s business. Good day.”
The Captain-General, his morning display of efficiency and cruelty complete, turned on his heels and walked away.
“W
ho were they?” Sharpe challenged Marquinez.
“They?”
“Those two men.”
“They were the thieves, of course.”
“I don’t believe it,” Sharpe claimed angrily. “I didn’t recognize either man.”
“If they were not the thieves,” Marquinez said very calmly, “then how do you explain their possession of your property?” He smiled as he waited for Sharpe’s answer and, when none came, he opened a drawer of his desk and took out a sheaf of documents. “Your travel permits, Colonel. You will note they specify you must leave Valdivia tomorrow.” He dealt the documents onto the desk one by one, as though they were playing cards. “Mister Harper’s travel pass, which bears the same date restrictions as your own. This is your fortress pass, which gives you entry to the Citadel at Puerto Crucero, and finally, a letter from His Excellency giving you permission to exhume the body of General Vivar.” Marquinez smiled. “Everything you wish!”
Sharpe, after his flash of anger, felt churlish. The papers were indeed everything he needed, even down to the letter authorizing the exhumation. “What about the church’s permission?”
“I think you will find that no churchman will countermand the wishes of Captain-General Bautista,” Marquinez said.
Sharpe picked up the papers. “You’ve been very helpful, Captain.”
“It is our pleasure to be helpful.”
“And at least we’ll have fine weather for our voyage,” Harper put in cheerfully.
“Your voyage?” Marquinez asked in evident puzzlement, then understood Harper’s meaning. “Ah! You are assuming that you will be traveling on board the
Espiritu Santo
. Alas, she has no spare passenger cabins, at least not till she has dropped those passengers traveling to Puerto Crucero. Which means that you must travel overland. Which is good news, gentlemen! It will offer you a chance to see some of our lovely countryside.”
“But if we don’t have to catch the ship,” Sharpe asked, “why do we have to leave tomorrow?”
“You surely want to have your business in Puerto Crucero finished by the time the
Espiritu Santo
arrives there, do you not? Else how will you be able to travel back to Europe in her? Besides, we always specify the dates for travel, Colonel, otherwise how do we know the permits have been properly used?”
“But I need a tin-lined coffin made!” Sharpe insisted, “and I can’t do that and buy horses all in one day!”
Marquinez brushed the objections aside. “The armorers at Puerto Crucero will be pleased to make a coffin for you. And I’m sure Mister Blair will be happy to help you buy horses and saddles, as well as supplies for the journey.”
Sharpe still protested the arrangement. “Why can’t we sleep on the
Espiritu Santo
’s deck? We don’t need cabins.”
Marquinez tried to soothe Sharpe. “The fault is entirely ours. We insisted that Captain Ardiles carry reinforcements for the Puerto Crucero garrison, and he claims he cannot
cram another soul on board his ship. Alas.” Marquinez sounded genuinely sympathetic. “But even if you could change Ardiles’s mind, then you would still need new travel permits because these, as you can plainly see, are good only for land travel and do not give you permission to journey by sea. It is the regulations, you understand.” Marquinez offered Sharpe one of his dazzling white smiles. “But perhaps, Colonel, you will do me the honor of letting me escort you for the first few miles? I could bring some company!” Marquinez raised his eyebrows to indicate that the company would be enjoyable. “And perhaps you will do me the favor of allowing me to provide you with luncheon? It would provide me with an opportunity to show you some scenery that is truly spectacular. I beg you! Please!” Marquinez waited for Sharpe’s assent, then sensed the Englishman’s suspicions. “My dear Colonel,” Marquinez hastened to reassure Sharpe, “bring Mister Blair if that will make you easier!”
It seemed churlish to refuse. So far Marquinez had exacted neither payment nor bribe for the travel permits, indeed he had produced everything Sharpe had wanted, and the elegant young Captain seemed genuinely enthusiastic about showing Sharpe and Harper some of Chile’s most beautiful countryside, and so Sharpe accepted the invitation, and then, with the permits safe in his pocket, he went to seek Blair’s urgent help in buying horses and supplies.
They had just one day before they rode south to rendezvous with a corpse.
I
t was, Harper said, a countryside so lovely and so fertile that it seemed only fitting that he rode it on a horse of gold.
In truth the horse was nothing special, but the beast had cost more money than either Harper or Sharpe had ever paid for a horse, and Sharpe’s horse had cost just as much, yet Blair had been at pains to convince them that the animals
had been purchased at something close to a bargain price. “Horses are expensive here!” the Consul had pleaded, “and when you leave Chile you should be able to sell them at a profit. Or something close to a profit.”
“At a loss, you mean?” Sharpe asked.
“You need horses!” Blair insisted, and so they had paid for the two most expensive lumps of horseflesh ever bred. Harper’s was a big mare, gray with a wall left eye and a hard, bruising gait. She was not pretty, but she was stubborn and strong enough to cope with Harper’s weight. Sharpe’s horse was also a mare, a chestnut with a docked tail and gaunt ribs. “All she needs is a bit of feeding,” Blair had said, then negotiated the price of a mule that was to carry their luggage as well as the box which, taken from Blair’s strong room, was now even more depleted of its precious gold.
What was left in the box was still a small fortune, and one that seemed increasingly unnecessary. So far, to Sharpe’s astonishment, everything had proved remarkably easy. “It must be your reputation,” Blair had said. The Consul claimed to be too busy to accept Marquinez’s invitation, but had assured Sharpe there could be no danger in Marquinez’s company. “Or perhaps Bautista thinks you’ve got a deal of influence back in Spain. You’re a lucky man.”
The lucky man now rode south under a sky so pale and blue that it seemed to have been rinsed by the recent winds and rains. Sharpe and Harper rode with the exquisitely uniformed Captain Marquinez ahead of an ebullient pack of young officers and their ladyfriends. The girls rode sidesaddle, what they called “English-style,” provoking laughter in their companions by their loud cries of alarm whenever the road was particularly steep or treacherous. At those moments the officers vied in their attentions to hold the ladies steady. “The girls are not used to riding,” Marquinez confided to Sharpe. “They come from an establishment behind the
church. You understand?” There was an odd tone of disapproval in Marquinez’s voice. Occasionally, when a girl’s laughter was particularly loud, Marquinez would wince with embarrassment, but on the whole he seemed happy to be free of Valdivia and riding into such lovely country. A dozen officers’ servants brought up the rear of the convoy, carrying food and wine for an outdoor luncheon.
They rode through wide vineyards, past rich villas and through white-painted villages, yet always, beyond the vines or the orchards or the tobacco fields, or behind the churches with their twin towers and high-peaked roofs, there were the great sharp edged mountains and deep swooping valleys and rushing white streams that cut like knives down from the peaks, above which, staining the otherwise clear sky, the smoke of two volcanoes smeared the blue with their gray-brown plumes. At other times, staring to their right, Sharpe and Harper could see ragged fingers of rocky land jutting and clawing out to an island-wracked sea. A ship, her white sails bright in the sun, was racing southward from Valdivia.
Luncheon was served beside a waterfall. Hummingbirds darted into a bank of wildflowers. The wine was heady. One of the girls, a dark-skinned mestizo, waded in the waterfall’s pool, urged by her friends ever farther into the deepening water until her skirt was hitched high about her thighs and the young officers cheered their glimpse of dark, tantalizing skin. Marquinez, sitting beside Sharpe, was more interested in a patrol of a dozen cavalrymen that idled southward on small, wiry horses. Marquinez raised a languid hand to acknowledge the patrol’s presence, then looked back to Sharpe. “What did you think of the Captain-General?”
A dangerous question, and one that Sharpe parried easily. “He seemed very efficient.”
“He’s a man of genius,” Marquinez said enthusiastically.
“Genius?” Sharpe could not hide his skepticism.
“Customs dues have increased threefold under his rule, so have tax revenues. We have firm government at last!” Sharpe glanced at his companion’s handsome face, expecting to see cynicism there, but Marquinez clearly meant every word he said. “And once we have all the guns we need,” Marquinez went on, “we’ll reconquer the northern regions.”
“You’d best be asking Madrid for some good infantry,” Sharpe said.
Marquinez shook his head. “You don’t understand Chile, Colonel. The rebels think they’re invincible, so sooner or later they will come to our fortresses, and they will be slaughtered, and everyone will recognize the Captain-General’s genius.” Marquinez tossed pebbles into the pool. Sharpe was watching the mestizo girl who, her thighs and skirt soaking, climbed onto the bank. “You find her pretty?” Marquinez suddenly asked.
“Yes. Who wouldn’t?”
“They’re pretty when they’re young. By the time they’re twenty and have two children they look like cavalry mules.” Marquinez fished a watch from his waistcoat pocket. “We must be leaving you, Colonel. You know your way from here?”
“Indeed.” Sharpe had been well coached by Blair in the route he must take. He and Harper would climb into the hills where their travel permit dictated that they must spend the night at a high fortress. Tomorrow they would ride down into the wilder country that sprawled across the border of the southern province. It was in that unsettled country, close to the hell-dark forests where embittered Indian tribes lived, that Blas Vivar had died. Blair and Marquinez had both assured Sharpe that the border country had been tamed since Vivar’s death, and that the highway could be used in perfect safety. “There have been no rebels there since Blas Vivar died,” Marquinez said. “There have been some high
way robberies, but nothing, I think, that should worry either you or Mister Harper.”
“They’re welcome to try, so they are,” Harper had said, and indeed he and Sharpe fairly bristled with weapons. Sharpe wore his big butcher’s blade of a sword, the sword with which he had fought through Portugal, Spain and France, and then at the field of Waterloo. It was no ordinary infantry officer’s sword, but instead the killing blade of a trooper from Britain’s Heavy Cavalry. Soldiers armed with just such big swords had carved a corps of veteran French infantry into bloody ruin at Waterloo, capturing two Eagles as they did it. The sword was reckoned a bad weapon by experts—unbalanced, ugly and too long in its blade—but Sharpe had used it to lethal effect often enough, and by now he had a sentimental attachment to it. He also had a loaded Baker rifle slung on one shoulder, and had two pistols in his belt.
Harper was even more fiercely armed. He too carried a rifle and two pistols, and had a saber at his waist, yet the Irishman also carried his own favorite weapon; a seven-barreled gun, made for Britain’s navy, yet too powerful for any but the biggest and most robust men to fire. The navy, which had wanted a weapon that could be fired like an overweight shotgun from the rigging onto an enemy’s deck, had abandoned the weapon because of its propensity to shatter the shoulders of the men pulling its trigger, but in Patrick Harper the seven-barreled gun had found a soldier capable of taming its brute ferocity. The gun was a cluster of seven half-inch barrels which were fired by a single lock, and was, in its effect, like a small cannon loaded with grapeshot. Sharpe was hoping that any highway robber, seeing the weapon, let alone the swords, rifles and pistols, would think twice before trying to steal the strongbox.
“Bloody odd, when you think about it,” Harper broke
their companionable silence an hour after they had parted from Marquinez.
“What’s odd?”
“That there wasn’t any room on the frigate. It was a bloody big boat.” Harper frowned. “You don’t think the buggers want us on this road so they can do us some mischief, do you?”
Sharpe had been wondering the same thing, but unaware how best to prepare for such trouble, he had not thought to perturb Harper by talking about it. Yet there was something altogether too convenient about the ease with which Marquinez had given them all the necessary permits but then denied them the chance to travel on the
Espiritu Santo
, something which suggested that maybe Sharpe and Harper were not intended to reach Puerto Crucero after all. “But I think we’re safe today,” Sharpe said.
“Too many people about, eh?” Harper suggested.
“Exactly.” They were riding through a plump and populated countryside on a road that was intermittently busy with other travelers; a friar walking barefoot, a farmer driving a wagon of tobacco leaves to Valdivia, a herdsman with a score of small bony cattle. This was not the place to commit murder and theft; that would come tomorrow in the wilder southern hills.
“So what do we do tomorrow?” Harper asked.
“We ride very carefully,” Sharpe answered laconically. He was not as sanguine as he sounded, but he did not know how else to plan against a mere possibility of ambush and he was unwilling to think of just turning back. He had come to Chile to find Blas Vivar and, even if his old friend was dead, he would still do his best to carry him home.
That night, in obedience to their travel permits, they stopped at a timber-walled fort that had been built so high above the surrounding land that it had been nicknamed the
Celestial Fort. Its simple log ramparts stared east to the mountains and west to the sea. To the north of the Celestial Fort, at the foot of the steep ridge that gave the fort its commanding height, was a small ragged village that was inhabited by natives who worked a nearby tobacco plantation. To the south, like a sullen warning of the dangers to come, were line after line of dark, wooded ridges. “I trust you brought your own food?” the fort’s commander, a cavalry Captain named Morillo, greeted Sharpe and Harper.
“Yes.”
“I’d like to feed you, but rations are scarce.” Morillo gave Sharpe back the travel permits while his men eyed the newcomers warily. Morillo was a tall young man with a weathered face. His eyes were cautious and watchful, the eyes of a soldier. His job was to lead his cavalrymen on long, aggressive patrols down the highway, deterring any rebels who might think of ambushing its traffic. “Not that we have rebels here now,” Morillo said. “The last Captain-General swept these valleys clean. He was a cavalryman, so he knew how to attack.” There was an unspoken criticism in the words, suggesting that the new Captain-General knew only how to defend.
“I knew Vivar well,” Sharpe said. “I rode with him in Spain. At Santiago de Compostela.”
Morillo stared at Sharpe with momentary disbelief. “You were at Santiago when the French attacked the cathedral?”
“I was in the cathedral when they broke the truce.”
“I was a child then, but I remember the stories. My God, but what times they were.” Morillo frowned in thought for a few seconds, then abruptly twisted to stare across the fort’s parade ground, which was an expanse of smoothly trampled earth. “Do you know Sergeant Dregara?”
“Dregara? No.”
“He rode in an hour ago, with a half troop. He was asking about you.”
“About me? I don’t know him,” Sharpe said.
“He knows you, and your companion. They’re across the parade ground, around an open fire. Dregara’s got a striped blanket over his shoulders.”
Sharpe half-turned and surreptitiously stared across the fort to where the group of cavalry troopers squatted about their fire. Sharpe suspected, but could not be sure, that it was the same patrol that had saluted Marquinez at lunchtime.
Morillo drew Sharpe away from the ears of his own men. “Sergeant Dregara tells me he proposes to escort you tomorrow.”
“I don’t need an escort.”
“Maybe what you need and what you will receive are very different, Colonel Sharpe. Things often are in Chile. Do I need to explain more?”
Sharpe had walked with the tall Spanish Captain into the open gate of the fort. Both men stopped and stared toward the distant sea which, from this eyrie, looked like a wrinkled sheet of hammered silver. “I assume, Captain,” Sharpe said, “that you regret the death of Don Blas?”
Morillo was tense as he skirted the betrayal of the present Captain-General with his admiration of the last. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“It happened not far from here, am I right?”
“A half day’s journey south, sir.” Morillo turned and pointed across the misted valleys of the wild country. “It wasn’t on the main road, but off to the east.”
“Strange, isn’t it,” Sharpe said, “that Don Blas cleared the rebels out of this region, yet was ambushed here by those same rebels?”
“Things are often strange in Chile, sir.” Morillo spoke very warily.
“Perhaps,” Sharpe said pointedly, “you could patrol southward tomorrow? Along the main road?”
Morillo, understanding exactly what Sharpe was suggesting, shook his head. “Sergeant Dregara brought me orders. I’m to ride to Valdivia tomorrow. I’m to leave a dozen men on post here, and the rest are to go to the Citadel with me. We’re to report to Captain Marquinez before two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Meaning an early start,” Sharpe said, “that will leave my friend and I alone with Sergeant Dregara?”
“Yes, sir.” Morillo stooped to light a cigar. The wind whipped the smoke northward. He snapped shut the glowing tinderbox and pushed it into his sabretache. “The orders are signed by Captain-General Bautista. I’ve never received orders direct from a General before.” Morillo drew on his cigar and Sharpe felt a chill creep up his spine. “You should also understand, sir,” Morillo spoke with an admirable understatement, “that General Bautista is not kind to men who disobey his orders.”
“I do understand that, Captain.”
“I’d like to help you, sir, truly I would. General Vivar was a good man.” Morillo shook his head ruefully. “When he was in command we had a score of forts like this one. We were training native cavalry. We were aggressive! Now?” He shrugged. “Now the only patrols are to keep this road open. We don’t really know what’s happening fifty miles east.”
Sharpe turned to look back into the fort. “These aren’t built for defense.”
“No, sir. They’re just refuges where tired men can spend a few nights in comparative safety. General Vivar deliberately made them uncomfortable so that we wouldn’t be tempted
to live in them permanently. He believed our place was out there.” Morillo waved toward the darkening hills.
The temporary nature of the fort’s accommodation was suggesting an idea to Sharpe. There was only one walled and roofed structure, a log cabin which Sharpe guessed was the officer’s perquisite, while the other cavalrymen were sheltered beneath the overhang of the firestep. Essentially the fort was nothing more than a walled bivouac; there was not even a water supply inside the walls. The horses had to be watered at the stream at the ridge’s foot, and any other drinking water had to be lugged up from the same place. Sharpe gestured at the log cabin. “Your quarters, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe Mister Harper and I can share them with you?”
Morillo frowned, not quite understanding the request, but he nodded anyway. “We’ll be cramped, but you’re welcome.”
“What time do you rouse the men?” Sharpe asked.
“Usually at six. We’d expect to leave at seven.”
“Could you leave earlier? While it was dark?”
Morillo nodded cautiously. “I could.”
Sharpe smiled. “I’m thinking, Captain, that if Sergeant Dregara is convinced Mister Harper and I are still asleep, he won’t disturb us. He may even wait till midmorning before he ventures to knock on the door of your quarters.”
Morillo understood the ruse, but looked doubtful. “He’ll surely see your horses are gone.”
“He might not notice if the horses are missing. After all, his horses and a dozen of yours will still be here. But he’ll notice if the mule is gone, so I’ll just have to leave it here, won’t I?”
Morillo drew on his cigar, then blew a stream of smoke toward the distant sea. “Captain-General Bautista’s orders are addressed to me. They say nothing about you, sir, and if
you choose to leave at three in the morning, then I can’t stop you, can I?”
“No, Captain, you can’t. And thank you.”
But Morillo was not finished. “I’d still be unhappy about you using the main road, sir. Even if you get a six-hour start on Dregara, you’ll be traveling slowly, while he knows the short cuts.” Morillo smiled. “I’ll give you Ferdinand.”
“Ferdinand?”
“You’ll meet him in the morning.” Morillo seemed amused, but would not say more.
The two men went back into the fort where the cooking fires crackled and smoked. Sentries paced the firestep as darkness seeped up from the valleys to engulf the sky and the mountains. Sulphurous yellow clouds shredded off the Andean peaks to spill toward the seaward plains, patterning the stars and shadowing the moon. An hour after sundown, Sharpe and Harper accompanied Captain Morillo as he went around the cooking fires to announce that his Valdivia patrol would be leaving three hours before dawn. Men groaned at the news, but Sharpe heard the humor behind their reaction and knew that at least these men still had confidence in their cause. Not all Vivar’s work had gone to waste.
“And you,
señor?
” Sergeant Dregara, who had been sitting at the fire with Morillo’s sergeants, looked slyly up at Sharpe. “You will go early, too?”
“Good Lord, no!” Sharpe yawned. “I’m an English gentleman, Sergeant, and English gentlemen don’t stir till at least an hour after dawn.”
“And the Irish not for another hour after that,” Harper put in happily.
Dregara was a middle-aged runt of a man with yellow teeth, a lined face, a scarred forehead and the eyes of a killer. He was holding a half-empty bottle of clear Chilean brandy that he now gestured toward Sharpe. “Maybe we can ride
south together,
señor?
There is sometimes safety in numbers.”
“Good idea,” Sharpe said in his best approximation of the braying voice some British officers liked to use. “And one of your men can bring us hot shaving water at, say, ten o’clock? Just tell the fellow to knock on the door and leave the bowl on the step.”
“Shaving water?” Dregara clearly hated being treated as a servant.
“Shaving water, Sergeant. Very hot. I can’t bear shaving in tepid water.”
Dregara managed to suppress his resentment. “
Si, señor
. At ten.”
The troopers wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down under the meager shelter of the fort’s firestep. The sentries paced overhead. Somewhere beyond the wall, in the forests that lapped against the ridge, a beast screamed. Sharpe, sleepless on the floor of Morillo’s quarters, listened to Harper’s snores. If Dregara was supposed to kill them, Sharpe thought, how would Bautista react when he heard they still lived? And why would Bautista kill them? It made no sense. Maybe Dregara meant no harm, but why would Morillo be ordered back to Valdivia? The questions flickered through Sharpe’s mind, but no answers came. It made sense, he supposed, that Bautista should resent Doña Louisa’s interest in her husband’s fate, for that interest could bring the scrutiny of Madrid onto this far, doomed colony, but was killing Louisa’s emissaries the way to avert such interest?
He slept at last, but it seemed he was woken almost immediately. Captain Morillo was shaking his shoulder. “You should go now, before the others stir. My Sergeant will open the gate. Wake up, sir!”
Sharpe groaned, turned over, groaned again. There had been a time when he could live on no sleep, but he felt too
old for such tricks now. There was a pain in his back, and an ache in his right leg where a bullet had once lodged. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Dregara’s bound to be awake when my men leave, and he mustn’t see you,” Morillo hissed.
Sharpe and Harper pulled on their boots, strapped on their sword belts, slung their weapons, then carried their saddles, bags and the strongbox to the fort’s gate where a Sergeant let them out into the chill night. A moment later Morillo, together with a much smaller man, brought their horses. The mule was left behind in the fort to lull any suspicions Dregara might have.
“This is Ferdinand,” Morillo introduced the small man. “He’s your guide. He’ll take you across the hills and cut a good ten hours off your journey. He’s a
picunche
. He speaks no Spanish, I’m afraid, nor any other Christian language, but he knows what to do.”
“
Picunche?
” Sharpe asked.
He was given his answer as a cloud slid from the moon to reveal that Ferdinand, named for the King of Spain, was an Indian. He was a small, thin man, with a flat mask of a face, dressed in a tatter of a cast-off cavalry uniform decorated with bright feathers stuck into its loops and buttonholes. He wore no shoes and carried no weapon.
“
Picunche
is a kind of tribal name,” Morillo explained as he helped saddle Harper’s horse. “We use the Indians as scouts and guides. There aren’t many savages who are friendly to us. Don Blas wanted to recruit more, but that idea died with him.”
“Doesn’t Ferdinand have a horse?” Harper asked.
Morillo laughed. “He’ll outrun your horses over a day’s marching. He’ll also give you a fighting chance to stay well ahead of Sergeant Dregara.” Morillo tightened a girth strap,
then stepped away. “Ferdinand will find his way back to me when he’s finished with you. Good luck, Colonel.”
Sharpe thanked the cavalry Captain. “How can we repay you?”
“Mention my name to Vivar’s widow. Say I was a true man to her husband.” Morillo was hoping that Doña Louisa would still have some influence in Spain, influence that would help his career when he was posted home again.
“I shall tell her you deserve whatever is in her gift,” Sharpe promised, then he pulled himself into the saddle and took the great strongbox onto his lap. “Good luck, Captain.”
“God bless you,
señor
. Trust Ferdinand!”
The Indian reached up and took hold of both horses’ bridles. The moon was flying in and out of ragged clouds, offering a bare light to the dark slope down which Ferdinand led their horses to where the trees closed over their heads. The main road went eastward, detouring about the thickly wooded country into which Ferdinand unerringly led them just as a bugle called its reveille up in the Celestial Fort. Sharpe laughed, pulled his hat over his eyes to protect them from the twigs and followed a savage to the south.
A
t dawn they rode through the forests of morning, hung with mists, spangled with a million beads of dew that were given light by the lancing, slanting rays of the rising sun. Drifts of vapor softened the great tree trunks among which a myriad of bright birds flew. The clouds had cleared, gone back to the mountains or blown out to the endless oceans. Ferdinand had relinquished the horses’ bridles and was content simply to lead the way through the towering trees. “I wonder where the hell we are,” Harper said.
“Ferdinand knows,” Sharpe replied, and the mention of his royal name made the small Indian turn and smile with file-sharpened teeth.
“We could have done with a few hundred of him at Waterloo,” Harper said. “They’d have frightened the buggers to death by just grinning at them.”
They rode on. At times, when the path was especially steep or slippery, they dismounted and led the horses. Once they circled a hill on a narrow path above a chasm of pearl-bright mist. Strange birds screeched at them. The worst moment of the morning came when Ferdinand brought them to a great canyon that was crossed by a perilously fragile bridge made of leather, rope and green wood. The green wood slats were held in place by the twisted leather straps and the whole precarious roadway was suspended from the rope cables. Ferdinand made gestures at Sharpe and Harper, grunting the while in a strange language.
“I think,” Harper said, “he wants us to cross one at a time. God save Ireland, but I think I’d rather not cross at all.”
It was a terrifying crossing. Sharpe went first and the whole structure shivered and swayed with every step he took. Ferdinand followed Sharpe, leading his blindfolded horse. Despite its blindfold the horse was nervous and trembling. Once, when the mare missed her footing and plunged a hoof through the slats, she began to panic, but Ferdinand soothed and calmed the beast. Far beneath Sharpe the mist shredded to reveal a white thread which was a quick-flowing stream deep in the canyon’s jungle.
Harper was white with terror when he finished the crossing. “I’d rather face the Imperial bloody Guard than do that again.”
They remounted and rode on, taking it in turns to balance the great box of golden guineas on their saddles’ pommels. Ferdinand loped tirelessly ahead. Harper, chewing a lump of hard bread, had begun to think of Bautista. “Why does that long-nosed bastard want to kill us?”
“God knows. I’ve been trying to make sense of it, and I can’t.”
Harper shook his head. “I mean if the man wants to be rid of us, then why the hell doesn’t he just let us take Don Blas’s body and be away? Why send those fellows to kill us?”
“If he did send them.” Sharpe, as the morning unfolded into sun-drenched innocence, had again begun to doubt the fears that had crowded in on him during the night.
“He sent them, right enough,” Harper said. “He’s an evil bastard, that Bautista. You only had to look in his eye. If a man like that comes into the tavern I throw him out. I won’t have him drinking my ale!”
“I don’t know if he’s evil,” Sharpe said, “but he’s certainly frightened.”
“Bautista? Frightened?” Harper was scornful.
“He’s like a man playing drumhead.” Drumhead was a card game that had been popular in the army. It was a simple game, needing only a pack of cards, as many players as wanted to risk their money and a playing surface like a drumhead. Each player nominated a card and another man dealt the cards face up onto the drumhead. The man whose card appeared last won the game.
“Drumhead?” Harper was still unconvinced.
“Bautista’s playing for very big stakes, Patrick. He’s cheating left, right and center and he knows, if he’s caught, that he’ll face court martial, disgrace, maybe even imprisonment. But if he wins, then he wins very big indeed. He’s watching the cards turn over and he’s dreading that he’ll lose. But he can’t stop playing because the winnings are so huge.”
“Then why the hell doesn’t he fight the war properly?” Harper grunted as he settled the strongbox more comfortably on his pommel.
“Because he knows the war is lost,” Sharpe said. “It would take an extraordinary soldier to win this war, and Bautista
isn’t an extraordinary soldier. Don Blas might have won it, but only if Madrid had sent him the ships to beat Cochrane, which they didn’t. So Bautista knows he’s going to lose, and that means he has to do two things. First, he needs to blame someone else for losing the war, and second, he has to grab as much of Chile’s wealth as possible. Then he can go home rich and blameless, and he can use the money to gain power in Madrid.”
“But why kill us? We’re bugger all to do with his problems.”
“We’re the enemy,” Sharpe said. “The closest Bautista came to losing was when Don Blas was here. Don Blas knew something that would destroy Bautista, and he was on the point of confronting Bautista when he died. We’re on Don Blas’s side, so we’re enemies.” It was the only answer that made sense to Sharpe, and though it was an answer full of gaps, it helped to explain the Captain-General’s enmity.
“So he’ll kill us?” Harper asked indignantly.
Sharpe nodded. “But not in public. If we can reach Puerto Crucero, we’re safe. Bautista needs to blame our disappearance on the rebels. He won’t dare attack us in a public place.”
“I pray to God you’re right,” Harper said feelingly. “I mean there’s no point in dying here, is there now?”
Sharpe felt a pang of guilt for having invited his friend. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“That’s what Isabella said. But, Goddamn it, a man gets tired of children after a time. I’m glad to be away for a wee while, so I am.” Harper had left four children in Dublin: Richard, Liam, Sean and the baby, Michael, whose real name was in a Gaelic form that Sharpe could not pronounce. “But I wouldn’t want never to see the nippers again,” Harper went on, “would I now?”
“There’s not much to do now,” Sharpe tried to reassure
him. “We just have to dig up Don Blas, seal him in a tin coffin, then take him home.”
“I still think you should put him in brandy,” Harper said, his fears forgotten.
“Whatever’s quickest,” Sharpe allowed, then he forgot that small problem, for Ferdinand had led them out from the trees and onto what had to be the main road from Valdivia to Puerto Crucero. The road stretched empty and inviting in either direction, and with no sign of any vengeful pursuers. Ferdinand was grinning, then said something in his own language.
“I think he means he’s leaving us here,” Harper said before pointing vigorously to the south.
Ferdinand nodded eagerly, intimating that they should indeed ride in that direction.
Sharpe opened the box, took out a guinea, and gave it to the Indian. Ferdinand tucked the coin into a pocket of his filthy uniform, offered a sharp-toothed grin of thanks, then turned back into the forest. Sharpe and Harper, brought safe to the road and far ahead of their pursuers, were out of danger. Ahead lay Puerto Crucero and a friend’s grave, behind was a thwarted enemy, and Sharpe, almost for the first time since he had reached the New World, felt his hopes rise.