Читать книгу Sharpe’s Devil: Napoleon and South America, 1820–1821 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 11

George Blair, British Consul in Valdivia, blinked short-sightedly at Richard Sharpe. ‘Why the hell should I tell you lies? Of course he’s dead!’ Blair laughed mirthlessly. ‘He’d better bloody be dead. He’s been buried long enough! The poor bugger must be in a bloody bad state if he’s still alive; he’s been underground these last three months. Are you sure you don’t have any gin in your baggage?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘People usually bring me gin from London.’ Blair was a plump, middle-aged man, wearing a stained white shirt and frayed breeches. He had greeted his visitors wearing a formal black tailcoat, but had long discarded the coat as too cumbersome in the day’s warmth. ‘It’s rather a common courtesy,’ he grumbled, ‘to bring gin from London.’

Sharpe was in no state to notice either the Consul’s clothes or his unhappiness, instead his thoughts were a whirlpool of disbelief and shock. Don Blas was not missing at all, but was dead and buried, which meant Sharpe’s whole voyage was for nothing. At least, that was what Blair reckoned. ‘He’s under the paving slabs in the garrison church at Puerto Crucero,’ George Blair repeated in his hard, clipped accent. ‘Jesus Christ! I know a score of people who were at the damned funeral. I wasn’t invited, and a good thing too. I have to put up with enough nonsense in this goddamn place without watching a pack of pox-ridden priests mumbling bloody Latin in double-quick time so they can get back to their native whores.’

‘God in his heaven,’ Sharpe blasphemed, then paused to gather his scattered wits, ‘but Vivar’s wife doesn’t know! They can’t bury a man without telling his wife!’

‘They can do whatever they damn well like! But don’t ask me to explain. I’m trying to run a business and a consulate, not explain the remnants of the Spanish bloody empire.’

Blair was a Liverpool merchant who dealt in hides, tallow, copper and timber. He was a bad-tempered, overworked and harassed man, yet, as Consul, he had little option but to welcome Sharpe and Harper into his house that stood in the main square of Valdivia, hard between the church and the outer ditch of the town’s main fort that was known simply as the Citadel. Blair had placed Louisa’s bribe money, all eighteen hundred golden guineas, in his strongroom that was protected by a massive iron door and by walls of dressed stone blocks a foot and a half thick. Louisa had given Sharpe two thousand guineas, but the customs officials at the wharf in Valdivia had insisted on a levy of ten per cent. ‘Bastards,’ Blair had commented when he heard of the impost. ‘It’s supposed to be just three per cent.’

‘Should I complain?’ Sharpe had already made an unholy fuss at the customs post, though it had done no good.

‘To Captain-General Bautista?’ Blair gave another mirthless laugh. ‘He’s the bastard that pegs up the percentage. You were lucky it wasn’t fifteen per cent!’ Then, over a plate of sugar cakes and glasses of wine brought by his Indian servants, Blair had welcomed Sharpe to Valdivia with the unwelcome news that Vivar’s death was no mystery at all. ‘The bugger was riding way ahead of his escort, was probably ambushed by rebels, and his horse bolted with him when the trap was sprung. Then three months later they found his body in a ravine. Not that there was much left of the poor bugger, but they knew it was him, right enough, because of his uniform. Mind you, it took them a hell of a long time to find his body, but the dagoes are bloody inefficient at everything except levying customs duties, and they can do that faster than anyone in history.’

‘Who buried him?’ Sharpe asked.

The Consul frowned in irritated puzzlement. ‘A pack of bloody priests! I told you!’

‘But who arranged it? The army?’

‘Captain-General Bautista, of course. Nothing happens here without Bautista giving the nod.’

Sharpe turned and stared through Blair’s parlour window which looked onto the Citadel’s outer ditch where two dogs were squabbling over what appeared to be a child’s discarded doll, but then, as the doll’s arm ripped away, Sharpe saw that the dogs’ plaything was the body of an Indian toddler that must have been dumped in the ditch.

‘Why the hell weren’t you invited to the funeral, Blair?’ Sharpe turned back from the window. ‘You’re an important man here, aren’t you? Or doesn’t the British Consul carry any weight in these parts?’

Blair shrugged. ‘The Spanish in Valdivia don’t much like the British, Colonel. They’re losing this fight, and they’re blaming us. They reckon most of the rebellion’s money comes from London, and they aren’t far wrong in thinking that. But it’s their own damned fault if they’re losing. They’re too bloody fond of lining their own pockets, and if it comes to a choice between fighting and profiteering, they’ll take the money every time. Things were better when Vivar was in charge, but that’s exactly why they couldn’t stomach him. The bugger was too honest, you see, which is why I didn’t see too many tears shed when they heard he’d been killed.’

‘The bugger,’ Sharpe said coldly, ‘was a friend of mine.’ He turned to stare again at the ditch where a flock of carrion birds edged close to the two dogs, hoping for a share of the child’s corpse.

‘Vivar was a friend of yours?’ Blair sounded shocked.

‘Yes.’

The confirmation checked Blair, who suddenly had to reassess the importance of his visitors, or at least Sharpe’s importance. Blair had already dismissed Harper as a genial Irishman who carried no political weight, but Sharpe, despite his rustic clothes and weathered face, was suddenly proving a much more difficult man to place. Sharpe had introduced himself as Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe, but the war had left as many Colonels as it had bastards, so the rank hardly impressed Consul Blair, but if Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe had been a friend of Don Blas Vivar, who had been Count of Mouromorto and Captain-General of Spain’s Chilean dominion, then such a friendship could also imply that Sharpe was a friend of the high London lords who, ultimately, gave Blair the privileges and honours that eased his existence in Valdivia. ‘A bad business,’ Blair muttered, vainly trying to make amends for his flippancy.

‘Where was the body found?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Some miles north-east of Puerto Crucero. It’s a wild area, nothing but woods and rocks.’ Blair was speaking in a much more respectful tone now. ‘The place isn’t a usual haunt of the rebels, but once in a while they’ll appear that far south. Government troops searched the valley after the ambush, of course, but no one thought to look in the actual ravine till a hunting party of Indians brought news that a white god was lying there. That’s one of their names for us, you see. The white god, of course, turned out to be Don Blas. They reckon that he and his horse must have fallen into the ravine while fleeing from his attackers.’

‘You’re sure it was rebels?’ Sharpe turned from the window to ask the question. ‘I’ve heard it might have been Bautista’s doing.’

Blair shook his head. ‘I’ve not heard those rumours. I’m not saying Bautista’s not capable of murder, because he is. He’s a cruel son of a whore, that one, but I never heard any tales of his having killed Captain-General Vivar, and, believe me, Chile breeds rumour the way a nunnery breeds the pox.’

Sharpe was unwilling to let the theory slip. ‘I heard Vivar had found out about Bautista’s corruption, and was going to arrest him.’

Blair mocked Sharpe’s naïvety. ‘Everyone’s corrupt here! You don’t arrest a man for breathing, do you? If Vivar was going to arrest Bautista then it would have been for something far more serious than corruption. No, Colonel, that dog won’t hunt.’

Sharpe thumped a fist in angry protest. ‘But to be buried three months ago! That’s long enough for someone to tell the authorities in Europe! Why the hell did no one think to tell his wife?’

It was hardly Blair’s responsibility, though he tried to answer as best he could. ‘Maybe the ship carrying the news was captured? Or shipwrecked? Sometimes ships do take a God-horrible time to make the voyage. The last time I went home we spent over three weeks just trying to get round Ushant! Sick as a dog, I was!’

‘Goddamn it.’ Sharpe turned back to the window. Was it all a misunderstanding? Was this whole benighted expedition merely the result of the time it sometimes took for news to cross between the old and new worlds? Had Don Blas been decently buried all this time? It was more than possible, of course. A ship could easily take two or three months to sail from Chile to Spain, and if Louisa had been in England when the news arrived in Galicia then it was no wonder that Sharpe and Harper had come on a fool’s errand. ‘Don’t you bury the dead in this town?’ he asked bad-temperedly.

Blair was understandably bemused by the sudden question, but then saw Sharpe was staring at the dead child in the Citadel’s ditch. ‘We don’t bury that sort of rubbish. Lord, no. It’s probably just the bastard of some Indian girl who works in the fortress. Indians count for nothing here!’ Blair chuckled. ‘A couple of Indian families won’t fetch the price of a decent hunting dog, let alone the cost of a burial!’

Sharpe sipped the wine, which was surprisingly good. He had been astonished, while on the boat coming from the harbour to the town, to see lavish vineyards terraced across the riverside hills. Somehow, after the grotesque shipboard tales, he had expected a country full of mystery and horror, so the sight of placid vineyards and lavish villas had been unexpected, rather like finding everyday comforts in the pits of hell. ‘I’ll need to go to Puerto Crucero,’ he now told Blair.

‘That could be difficult.’ Blair sounded guarded. ‘Very difficult.’

‘Why?’ Sharpe bristled.

‘Because it’s a military area, and because Bautista doesn’t like visitors going there, and because it’s a port town, and the Spaniards have lost too many good harbours on this coast to let another one go, and because they think all Englishmen are spies. Besides, the citadel at Puerto Crucero is the place where the Spanish ship their gold home.’

‘Gold?’ Harper’s interest sparked.

‘There’re one or two mines left; not many and they don’t produce much, and most of what they do produce Bautista is probably thieving, but what little does go back to Madrid leaves through the wharf of Puerto Crucero’s citadel. It’s the nearest harbour to the mines, you see, which is why the dagoes are touchy about it. If you ask to visit Puerto Crucero they might think you’re spying for Cochrane. You know who Cochrane is?’

‘I know,’ Sharpe said.

‘He’s a devil, that one,’ Blair, unable to resist admiration for a fellow Briton, chuckled, ‘and they’re all scared to hell of him. You want to see a dago piss in his breeches? Just mention Cochrane. They think he’s got horns and a tail.’

Sharpe dragged the conversation back to his purpose. ‘So how do I get permission to visit Puerto Crucero?’

‘You have to get a travel permit from army headquarters.’

‘Which is where?’

‘In the Citadel, of course.’ Blair nodded at the great fort which lay on the river’s bend at the very heart of Valdivia.

‘Who do I see there?’

‘A young fellow called Captain Marquinez.’

‘Will Marquinez pay more attention to you than to me?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Oh, Christ, no! Marquinez is just an over-groomed puppy. He doesn’t make the decision. Bautista’s the one who’ll say yea or nay.’ Blair jerked a thumb towards his padlocked strongroom. ‘I hope there’s plenty of money in that box you fetched here, or else you’ll be wasting your time in Chile.’

‘My time is my own,’ Sharpe said acidly, ‘which is why I don’t want to waste it.’ He frowned at Harper who was happily devouring Blair’s sugar cakes. ‘If you can stop feeding yourself, Patrick, we might start work.’

‘Work?’ Harper sounded alarmed, but hurriedly swilled down the last of his wine and snatched a final sugar cake before following Sharpe out of Blair’s house. ‘So what work are we doing?’ the Irishman asked.

‘We’re going to dig up Don Blas’s body, of course,’ Sharpe said, ‘and arrange to have it shipped back to Spain.’ Sharpe’s confident voice seemed to rouse Valdivia’s town square from the torpor of siesta. A man who had been dozing on the church steps looked irritably towards the two tall strangers who strode so noisily towards the Citadel. A dozen Indians, their squat faces blank as carvings, sat in the shade of a mounted statue which stood in the very centre of the square. The Indians, who were shackled together by a length of heavy chain manacled to their ankles, pretended not to notice Sharpe, but could not hide their astonishment at the sight of Harper; doubtless thinking that the tall Irishman was a giant. ‘They’re admiring me, so they are!’ Harper boasted happily.

‘They’re working out how many families they could feed off your carcass. If they boiled you down and salted the flesh there probably wouldn’t be famine in this country for a century.’

‘You’re just jealous.’ Harper, seeing new sights, was a happy man. The French wars had given him a taste for travel, and that taste was being well fed by Chile. His only disappointment so far was the paucity of one-legged giants, unicorns or any other mythical beasts. ‘Look at that! Handsome, aren’t they, now?’ He nodded admiringly towards a group of women who, standing in the shade of the striped awnings which protected the shop fronts, returned Harper’s curiosity and admiration. Harper and Sharpe were new faces in a small town, and thus a cause for excited speculation. The wind swirled dust devils across the square and flapped the ornate Spanish ensign which flew over the Citadel’s gatehouse. A legless beggar, swinging along on his hands, followed Sharpe and pleaded for money. Another, who looked like a leper, made a meaningless noise and held out the stump of a wrist towards the two strangers. A Dominican monk, his white robes stained with the red dust that blew everywhere, was arguing with a carter who had evidently failed to deliver a shipment of wine.

‘We’re going to need a carter,’ Sharpe was thinking aloud as he led Harper towards the Citadel’s sentries, ‘or at least a cart. We’re also going to want two riding horses, plus saddlery, and supplies for as long as it takes to get to Puerto Crucero and back. Unless we can sail home from Puerto Crucero? Or maybe we can sail down there! That’ll be cheaper than buying a cart.’

‘What the hell do we want a cart for?’ Harper was panting at the brisk pace set by Sharpe.

‘We need a cart to carry the coffin to Puerto Crucero, unless, of course, we can go there by ship.’

‘Why the hell don’t we have a coffin made in Puerto Crucero?’ Harper asked. ‘The world’s not so short of carpenters that you can’t find a man to knock up a bloody box!’

‘Because a box won’t do the trick!’ Sharpe said. ‘The thing has to be watertight, Patrick, not to keep the rain out but to keep the decay in. We’re going to need a tinsmith, and I don’t suppose Puerto Crucero has too many of those! So we’ll have a watertight box made here before we go south.’

‘We could plop him in a vat of brandy,’ Harper suggested helpfully. ‘There’s a fellow who drinks in my place that was a gunner’s mate on the Victory at Trafalgar, and he says that after the battle they brought Nelson back in a barrel of brandy. My fellow had a look at the body when they unstowed it, and he says the Admiral was as fresh as the day he died, so he was, with flesh soft as a baby, and the only change was that all the man’s hair and nails had grown wild. He tasted the brandy too, so he did. He says it was a bit salty.’

‘I don’t want to put Don Blas in brandy,’ Sharpe said irritably. ‘He’ll be half rotted out as it is, and if we put him in a cask of bloody liquor he’ll like as not dissolve altogether, and instead of burying the poor man in Spain we’ll just be pouring him away. So we’ll put him in a tin box, solder him up tight, and take him back that way.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Harper said grimly, the tone provoked by the unfriendly faces of the sentries at the fort’s gate. The Citadel reminded Sharpe of the Spanish fortresses he had assaulted in the French wars. It had low walls over which the muzzles of the defenders’ guns showed grimly, and a wide, dry moat designed to be a killing ground for any attackers who succeeded in crossing the earthen glacis which was banked to ricochet assaulting cannonfire safely up and over the defenders’ heads. The only incongruity about Valdivia’s formidable Citadel was an ancient-looking tower that stood like a mediaeval castle turret in the very centre of the fortifications.

A sergeant accosted Sharpe and Harper on the bridge, then reluctantly allowed them into the fort itself. They walked through the entrance tunnel, across a wide parade ground, then through a second gateway into a cramped and shadowed inner courtyard. One wall of the yard was made by the ancient limewashed tower that was pockmarked by bullet holes. There were smears of dried blood near some of the bullet marks, suggesting that this cheerless place was where Valdivia’s prisoners met their firing squads.

They enquired at the inner guardroom for Captain Marquinez who, arriving five minutes later, proved to be a tall, strikingly handsome and extraordinarily fashionable young man. His uniform seemed more appropriate for the jewelled halls of Madrid than for this far, squalid colony. He wore a Hussar jacket so frogged with gold braid that it was impossible to see the cloth beneath, a white kidskin pelisse edged with black fur, and skintight sky blue cavalry breeches decorated with gold embroidery and silver side buttons. His epaulette chains, sword sling, spurs and scabbard furnishings were all of shining gold. His manners matched his uniform’s tailoring. He apologized for having kept his visitors waiting, welcomed them to Chile on behalf of Captain-General Bautista, then invited Sharpe and Harper to his quarters where, in a wide, comfortable room, his servant brought cups of steaming chocolate, small gold beakers of a clear Chilean brandy, and a plate of sugared grapes. Marquinez paused in front of a gilt-framed mirror to check that his wavy black hair was in place, then crossed to his wide-arched window to show off the view. ‘It really is a most beautiful country,’ the Captain spoke wistfully, as though he knew it was being lost.

The view was indeed spectacular. The window looked eastwards across the town’s thatched roofs, then beyond the shadowy foothills to the far snow-topped mountains. One of those distant peaks was pluming a stream of brown smoke to the south wind. ‘A volcano,’ Marquinez explained. ‘Chile has a number of them. It’s a tumultuous place, I fear, with frequent earthquakes, but fascinating despite its dangers.’ Marquinez’s servant brought cigars, and Marquinez hospitably offered a burning spill to Harper. ‘So you’re staying with Mister Blair?’ he asked when the cigars were well lit. ‘Poor Blair! His wife refused to travel here, thinking the place too full of dangers! Still, if you keep Blair filled with gin or brandy he’s a happy enough man. Your Spanish is excellent, permit me to congratulate you. So few of your countrymen speak our language.’

‘We both served in Spain,’ Sharpe explained.

‘You did! Then our debt to you is incalculable. Please, seat yourselves. You said you had a letter of introduction?’

Marquinez took and read Doña Louisa’s letter which did not specifically describe Sharpe’s errand, but merely asked any Spanish official to offer whatever help was possible. ‘Which of course we will offer gladly!’ Marquinez spoke with what seemed to be a genuine warmth. ‘I never had the pleasure of meeting Don Blas’s wife. He died, of course, before she could join him here. So very tragic, and such a waste. He was a good man, even perhaps a great man! There was something saintly about him, I always thought.’ The last compliment, uttered in a very bland voice, somehow suggested what an infernal nuisance saints could be. Marquinez carefully folded the letter’s pendant seal into the paper then handed it back to Sharpe with a courtly flourish. ‘And how, sir, might we help you?’

‘We need a permit to visit Puerto Crucero where we want to exhume Don Blas’s body, then ship it home.’ Sharpe, encouraged by Marquinez’s friendliness, saw no need to be delicate about his needs.

Marquinez smiled, revealing teeth as white and regular as a small child’s. ‘I see no extraordinary difficulties there. You will, of course, need a permit to travel to Puerto Crucero.’ He went to his table and riffled through his papers. ‘Did you sail out here on the Espiritu Santo?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s due to sail back to Spain in a few days and I see that she’s ordered to call at Puerto Crucero on her way. There’s a gold shipment ready, and Ardiles’s ship is the safest transport we have. I see no reason why you shouldn’t travel down the coast in the Espiritu Santo and, if we’re fortunate, you might even take the body back to Europe in her hold!’

Sharpe, who had been prepared by Blair for every kind of official obstructiveness, dared not believe his good fortune. The Espiritu Santo could indeed solve all his problems, but Marquinez had qualified his optimism with one cautious word that Sharpe now echoed as a tentative query. ‘Fortunate?’

‘Besides the permit to travel to Puerto Crucero,’ Marquinez explained, ‘you will need a permit to exhume Don Blas’s body. That permit is issued by the church, of course, but I’m sure the Bishop will be eager to satisfy the Dowager Countess of Mouromorto. However, you should understand that sometimes the church is, how shall I say? Dilatory?’

‘We came prepared for such difficulties,’ Sharpe said.

‘How so?’ The question was swift.

‘The church must have charities dear to its heart?’

‘How very thoughtful of you.’ Marquinez, relieved that Sharpe had so swiftly understood the obstacle, offered his guests a dazzling smile and Sharpe wondered how a man kept his teeth so white. Marquinez then held up a warning hand. ‘We mustn’t forget the necessary licence to export a body. There is a disease risk, you understand, and we have to satisfy ourselves that every precaution has been taken.’

‘We came well prepared,’ Sharpe said dourly. The requirements, so far as he could see, were two massive bribes. One to the church which, in Sharpe’s experience, was always greedy for cash, and the other to the army authorities to secure the travel permit and for the licence to export a body, which licence, Sharpe suspected, had just been dreamed up by the inventive Marquinez. Doña Louisa, Sharpe thought, had understood Chile perfectly when she had insisted on sending him with the big chest of coins. Sharpe smiled at the charming Marquinez. ‘So when, señor, may we expect a travel permit? Today?’

‘Oh, dear me, no!’ Marquinez frowned, as though Sharpe’s suggestion of such haste was somehow unseemly.

‘Soon?’ Sharpe pressed.

‘The decision is not mine,’ Marquinez said happily.

‘Our affairs will surely not be of interest to Captain-General Bautista?’ Sharpe said with what he hoped was a convincing innocence.

‘The Captain-General is interested in all our visitors, especially those who have been notable soldiers.’ Marquinez bowed to Sharpe, whose fame had been described in Louisa’s letter of introduction. ‘Tell me,’ Marquinez went on, ‘were you at Waterloo?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I am sure the Captain-General will want to meet you. General Bautista is an aficionado of the Emperor. He would, I think, be delighted to hear of your experiences.’ Marquinez beamed delightedly, as if a mutual treat awaited his master and Sharpe. ‘Such a pleasure to meet you both!’ Marquinez said, then ushered them back to the guardroom. ‘Such a pleasure,’ he said again.

‘So how did it go?’ Blair asked when they returned.

‘Very well,’ Sharpe said. ‘All things considered it couldn’t have gone much better.’

‘That means you’re in trouble,’ Blair said happily, ‘that means you’re in trouble.’

That night it rained so heavily that the town ditch flooded with earth-reddened water which, in the moonlight, looked like blood. Blair became drunk. He bemoaned that his wife was still in Liverpool and commiserated with Sharpe and Harper that their wives were, respectively, in France and Ireland. ‘You live in bloody France?’ Blair kept asking the question as though to dilute the astonishment he evidently felt for Sharpe’s choice of a home. ‘Bloody funny place to live, I mean if you’ve been fighting the buggers. It must be like a fox moving in with the rabbits!’

Sharpe tried to talk of more immediate matters, like Captain-General Bautista and his fascination for Napoleon, but Blair did not want to talk about the Spanish commander. ‘He’s a bastard. A son of a whore bastard, and that’s all there is to say about him.’ It was clear that Blair, despite his privileged status as a diplomat, feared the Spanish commander.

‘Are you saying he’s illegitimate?’ Sharpe asked disingenuously.

‘Oh, Christ, no.’ Blair glanced at the servants as though fearing they had suddenly learned English and would report this conversation to Bautista’s spies. ‘Bautista’s a younger son, so he needs to make his own fortune. He got his posting here because his father is a minister in Ferdinand VII’s government, and he greased his son a commission in the artillery and an appointment in Chile, because this is where the money is. But the rest Bautista did for himself. He’s capable! He’s efficient and a hard worker. He’s probably no soldier, but he’s no weakling. And he’s making himself rich.’

‘So he’s corrupt?’

‘Corrupt!’ Blair mocked the word. ‘Of course he’s corrupt. They’re all corrupt. I’m corrupt! Everyone here knows the bloody war is lost. It’s only a question of time before the Spaniards go and the Chileans can bugger up their own country instead of having someone else to do it for them, so what Bautista and his people are doing is making themselves rich before someone takes away the tray of baubles.’ Blair paused, sipped, then leaned closer to Sharpe. ‘Your friend Vivar wasn’t corrupt, which is why he made enemies, but Bautista, he’s a coming man! He’ll make his money then go home and use that money to buy himself office in Madrid. Mark my words, he’ll be the power in Spain before he’s fifty.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘He’s a youngster! Thirty, no more.’ Blair, clearly deciding he had said enough about the feared Bautista, pushed his glass to the end of the table for a servant girl to fill with a mixture of rum and wine. ‘If you want a whore, Colonel,’ Blair went on, ‘there’s a chingana behind the church. Ask for the girl they call La Monja!’ Blair rolled his eyes heavenwards to indicate what exquisite joys awaited Sharpe and Harper if they followed his advice. ‘She’s a mestiza.’

‘What’s a mestiza?’ Harper asked.

‘Half-breed, and that one’s half a woman and half a wildcat.’

‘I’d rather hear about Bautista,’ Sharpe said.

‘I’ve told you, there’s nothing to tell. Man’s a bastard. Cross him and you get butchered. He’s judge, jury and executioner here. He’s also horribly efficient. You want some more rum?’

Sharpe glanced at the two Indian girls who, holding their jugs of wine and rum, stood expressionless at the edge of the room. ‘No.’

‘You can have them, too,’ Blair said hospitably. ‘Help yourselves, both of you! I know they look like cows, but they know their way up and down a bed. No point in employing them otherwise. They can’t cook and their idea of cleaning a room is to rearrange the dirt, so what else are they good for? And in the dark you don’t know they’re savages, do you?’

Sharpe again tried to turn the conversation back to his own business. ‘I need to find the American Consul. Does he live close?’

‘What the hell do you want Fielding for?’ Blair sounded offended, as though Sharpe’s question suggested that Fielding was a better Consul than Blair.

Sharpe had no intention of revealing that he possessed a signed portrait of Napoleon which the American Consul was supposed to smuggle to a British Colonel now living in the rebel part of the country, so instead he made up a story about doing business for an American expatriate living in Normandy.

‘Well, you’re out of luck,’ Blair said with evident satisfaction. ‘Fielding’s away from Valdivia this week. One of his precious whaling boats was impounded by the Spanish navy, so he’s on Chiloe, trying to have the bribe reduced to something under a king’s ransom.’

‘Chiloe?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Island down south. Long way away. But Fielding will be back in a week or so.’

Sharpe hid his disappointment. He had been hoping to deliver the portrait quickly, then forget about the Emperor’s gift, but now, if he was to keep his promise to Bonaparte, he would have to find some other way of reaching Fielding. ‘Have you ever heard of a Lieutenant-Colonel Charles?’ he asked Blair, as casually as he could.

‘Charles? Of course I’ve heard of Charles. He’s one of O’Higgins’s military advisers.’

‘So he’s a rebel?’

‘Of course he’s a bloody rebel! Why else would he have come to Chile? He likes to fight, and Europe isn’t providing any proper wars these days, so all the rascals come over here and complicate my life instead. What do you want with Charles?’

‘Nothing,’ Sharpe said, then let the subject drop.

An hour later he and Harper went to their beds and lay listening to the water sluice off the tiles. The mattresses were full of fleas. ‘Like old times,’ Harper grumbled when they woke early.

Blair was also up at first light. The rain in the night had been so heavy that part of the misted square was flooded, and the inundation had turned the rubbish-choked ditch into a moat in which foul things floated. ‘A horrid day to travel,’ Blair complained when he met them in his parlour where coffee waited on the table. ‘It’ll be raining again within the hour, mark my words.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Down river. To the port.’ Blair groaned and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. ‘I’ve got to supervise some cargo loading, and probably see the Captain of the Charybdis.’

‘What’s the Charybdis?’ Harper asked.

‘Royal Navy frigate. We keep a squadron on the coast just to make sure the bloody dagoes don’t shoot any of our people. They know that if they upset me I’ll arrange to have their toy boats blown out of the water.’ Blair shivered, then groaned with pain. ‘Breakfast!’ he shouted towards the kitchens, then flinched as a muffled rattle of musketry sounded from the Citadel. ‘That’s another rebel gone,’ Blair said thickly. There was a second ragged volley. ‘Business is good this morning.’

‘Rebels?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Or some poor bugger caught with a gun and no money to bribe the patrol. They shove them up against the Angel Tower, say a quick Hail Mary, then send the buggers into eternity.’

‘The Angel Tower?’ Sharpe asked.

‘It’s that ancient lump of stone in the middle of the fort. The Spaniards built it when they first came here, way back in the dark ages. Bloody thing has survived earthquake, fire, and rebellion. It used to be a prison, but it’s empty now.’

‘Why is it called the Angel Tower?’ Harper asked.

‘Christ knows, but you know what the dagoes are like. Some drunken Spanish whore probably saw an angel on its top and the next thing you know they’re all weeping and praying and the priests are carrying round the collection plate. Where’s my goddamned bloody breakfast?’ he shouted towards the kitchen.

Blair, well-breakfasted at last, left for the harbour an hour later. ‘Don’t expect anything from Marquinez!’ he warned Sharpe. ‘They’ll promise you anything, but deliver nothing. You’ll not hear a word from that macaroni until you offer him a fat bribe.’

Yet, no sooner had Blair gone, than a message arrived from the Citadel asking Colonel Sharpe and Mister Harper to do the honour of attending on Captain Marquinez at their earliest opportunity. So, moments later, Sharpe and Harper crossed the bridge, walked through the tunnel that pierced the glacis, crossed the outer parade courtyard and so into the inner yard where two bodies lay like heaps of soiled rags under the bloodstained wall of the Angel Tower. Marquinez, greeting Sharpe in the courtyard, was embarrassed by the bodies. ‘A wagon is coming to take them to the cemetery. They were rebels, of course.’

‘Why don’t you just dump them in the ditch like the Indian babies?’ Sharpe asked Marquinez sourly.

‘Because the rebels are Christians, of course.’ Marquinez was bemused that the question had even been asked.

‘None of the Indians are Christian?’

‘Some of them are, I suppose,’ Marquinez said airily, ‘though personally I don’t know why the missionaries bother. One might as well offer the sacrament to a jabbering pack of monkeys. And they’re treacherous cretures. Turn your back and they’ll stab you. They’ve been rebelling against us for hundreds of years, and they never seem to learn that we always win in the end.’ Marquinez ushered Sharpe and Harper into a room with a high arched ceiling. ‘Will you be happy to wait here? The Captain-General would like to greet you.’

‘Bautista?’ Sharpe was taken aback.

‘Of course! We only have one Captain-General!’ Marquinez was suddenly all charm. ‘The Captain-General would like to welcome you to Chile himself. Captain Ardiles told him how you had a private audience with Bonaparte and, as I mentioned, the Captain-General has a fascination with the Emperor. So, do you mind waiting? I’ll have some coffee sent. Or would you prefer wine?’

‘I’d prefer our travel permits,’ Sharpe said truculently.

‘The matter is being considered, I do assure you. We must do whatever we can to look after the happiness of the Countess of Mouromorto. Now, if you will excuse me?’ Marquinez, with a confiding and dazzling smile, left them in the room which was furnished with a table, four chairs, and a crucifix hanging from a bent horseshoe nail. A broken saddle tree was discarded in one corner, while a lizard watched Sharpe from the curved ceiling. The room’s one window looked onto the execution yard. After an hour, during which no one came to fetch Sharpe and Harper, a wagon creaked into the yard and a detail of soldiers swung the two dead rebels onto the wagon’s bed.

Another hour passed, noted by the chiming of a clock somewhere deep in the fort. Neither wine, coffee, nor a summons from the Captain-General arrived. Captain Marquinez had disappeared, and the only clerk in the office behind the guardroom did not know where the Captain might be found. The rain fell miserably, slowly diluting the bloodstains on the limewashed wall of the Angel Tower.

The rain fell. Still no one came and, as the clock chimed another half hour, Sharpe’s patience finally snapped. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

‘What about Bautista?’

‘Bugger Bautista.’ It seemed that Blair was right about the myriad of delays that the Spanish imposed on even the simplest bureaucratic procedure, but Sharpe did not have the patience to be the victim of such nonsense. ‘Let’s go.’

It was raining much harder now. Sharpe ran across the Citadel’s bridge, while Harper lumbered after. They splashed across the square’s cobbles, past the statue where the group of chained Indians still sat vacant under the cloudburst, to where a heavy wagon, loaded with untanned hides, was standing in front of Blair’s house. The untreated leather stank foully. A uniformed soldier was lounging under the Consul’s arched porch, beside the drooping British flag, apparently guarding the wagon’s stinking cargo. The day-dreaming soldier straightened as Sharpe approached. ‘You can’t go in there, señor