Sharpe 21 - Sharpe's Devil (9 page)

“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 heavenward to indicate what exquisite joys awaited Sharpe and Harper if they followed his advice. “She's a mestizo.”

“What's a mestizo?” Harper asked.

“Half-breed, and that one's half woman and half 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 were 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 the next morning.

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 parlor where coffee waited on the table. “It'll be raining again within the hour, mark my words.”

“Where are you going?”

“Downriver. 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 toward the kitchen, 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 around the collection plate. Where's my Goddamned bloody breakfast?” he shouted toward the kitchen.

Blair, well breakfasted at last, left for the harbor 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 honor 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 into the inner yard where two bodies lay like heaps of soiled rags against 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 replied, 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 creatures. 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 have only 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 lime-washed 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 him. They splashed across the square's cobbles, past the statue where the group of chained Indians still sat vacantly 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 daydreaming soldier straightened as Sharpe approached. “You can't go in there, senar!” He moved to block Sharpe's path. “Senor!”

“Shut up! Get out of my bloody way!” Sharpe, disgusted with all things Spanish, rammed his forearm onto the soldier's chest, piling him backward. Sharpe expected Blair's door to be locked, but unexpectedly it yielded to his thrust. He pushed it wide open as Harper ran into the porch's shelter. The dazed sentry took one look at the tall Irishman's size and decided not to make an issue of the confrontation. Sharpe stamped inside. “Damn Marquinez! Damn Bautista! Damn the bloody Spaniards!” He took off his wet greatcoat and shook the rain off it. “Bloody, bloody Spaniards! They never bloody change! You remember when we liberated their Goddamned bloody country and they wanted to charge customs duty on the powder and shot we used to do it? Goddamned bloody Spaniards!”

Harper, who was married to a Spaniard, smiled soothingly. “We need a cup of tea, that's what we need. That and some decent food, but I'll settle for dry clothes first.” He started climbing the stairs, but halfway to the landing he suddenly checked, then swore. “Jesus!"

“What?”

“Thieves!” Harper was charging up to the landing. Sharpe followed.

“Get down!” Harper screamed, then threw himself sideways through an open doorway. Sharpe had a glimpse of two men in a second doorway, then the landing was filled with smoke as one of the men fired a gun. The noise was huge, echoing around the house. Bitter-smelling smoke churned in the corridor. Sharpe did not see where the bullet went. He only knew it had not hit him.

He scrambled to his feet and ran past the doorway where Harper had sheltered. He could hear the thieves running ahead of him. “We've got the buggers trapped!” He shouted the encouragement for Harper, then he saw that there was another staircase at the back of the house, presumably a stair for servants, and the two thieves were jumping its steps three at a time.

“Stop!” Sharpe bellowed. He had visited the Citadel in civilian clothes, not bothering to wear any weapons. “Stop!” he shouted again, but the two men were already scrambling out into the stableyard. The mestizo cook was screaming.

Sharpe reached the kitchen door as the thieves tugged open the stableyard gate. Sharpe ran into the rain, still shouting at the men to stop. Both thieves were carrying sacks of plunder, and both were armed with short-barreled cavalry carbines. One carbine had been fired, but now the second man, fearing Sharpe's pursuit, turned and aimed his gun. The man had black hair, a bushy moustache and a scar on his cheek, then Sharpe realized the carbine was at point-blank range and he hurled himself sideways, slithering through puddles of rain and heaps of stable muck to thump against a bale of straw. The gate was open now, but the moustached gunman did not run; instead he carefully leveled the carbine at Sharpe. He was holding the gun one-handed. There was a pause of a heartbeat, then he smiled and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. For a second the man just gaped at Sharpe, then, suddenly scared, he hurled the carbine like a club and took off through the gate after his companion.

Sharpe was climbing to his feet, but had to drop flat again as the gun flew over his head. He stood again, slipped as he began running, found his balance, then clung to the gatepost when he saw that the two men had disappeared into a crowded alley. He swore.

He closed the gate, brushed the horse manure off his jacket and breeches, picked up the thief's carbine and went back to the kitchen. “Stop your noise, woman!” he snapped at the cook, then stared up to where Harper had appeared at the top of the back stairs. “What's the matter with you?”

“God save Ireland.” Harper came slowly down the stairs. He had gone pale as paper, and had a hand clapped to the side of his head. Blood showed between his fingers. “Bugger shot me!” Harper staggered against the wall, but managed to keep his balance. “I went through the whole damned French wars, so I did, and never once did I take a bullet, and now a damned thief in a damned town at the end of the damned world hits me! Jesus sweet Christ!” He took his hand away and blood oozed from his sandy hair to trickle down his neck. “I'm feeling dizzy, so I am.”

Sharpe helped Harper to a chair, sat him down, then probed the blood-soaked hair. The damage was slight. The bullet had seared across the scalp, breaking the skin, but not doing any other damage. “The bullet just grazed you,” Sharpe said in relief.

“Grazed, indeed! I was hit, so I was!”

“Barely broke the skin.”

“Lucky to be alive, I am. Sweet mother of God, but I could have been dead by now.”

“Luckily you've got a skull like a bloody ox.” Sharpe rapped Harper's temple. “It would take a twelve pounder to dent that skull.”

“Would you listen to him! As near to death as a goose at Christmas, so I am, and all he can do is tap my skull!”

Sharpe went to the big water vat by the back door, soaked a piece of cloth, and tossed it to Harper. “Hold that against your head. It'll bring you back to life. I'm going to see what the bastards took.”

Apart from their weapons and the chest with Louisa's gold, all of which had been locked in Blair's strong room, the thieves appeared to have taken everything. Sharpe, disconsolate, went downstairs to where Harper was dabbing his bloody head with the wet rag. “The lot,” Sharpe said bitterly. “Your bag, my bags, our clothes, boots, razors. The lot.”

“The Emperor's thimble?” Harper asked in disbelief.

“Everything,” Sharpe said. “Bonaparte's portrait, and some stuff of Blair's as well. I can't tell what, but the candlesticks are gone and those small pictures that were on the shelf. Bastards!”

“What about your locket?”

“Around my neck.”

“The guns?”

Sharpe shook his head. “The strong-room padlock wasn't touched.” He picked up the thief s weapon. “The bastard tried to shoot me twice. It wouldn't fire.”

“He forgot to prime it?”

Sharpe opened the pan and saw a sludge of wet powder there, then saw that the trigger was loose. He scraped the priming out of the pan and tapped the gun's butt on the floor. His guess was that the carbine's mainspring had jammed because the wood of the stock had swollen in the damp weather. It was a common enough problem with cheap guns. He tapped harder and this time the trapped spring jarred itself free and the flint snapped down on the emptied pan.

“Swollen wood?” Harper asked.

“Saved my life, too. Bugger had me lined up at five paces.” He peered at the lockplate and saw the mark of the Cadiz Armory, which made this a Spanish army gun. There was nothing sinister in that. The world was awash with old army weapons; even Sharpe and Harper carried rifles with the British Government's Tower Armory mark on their plates.

Sharpe turned to the whimpering cook and accused her of letting the two thieves into the house, but the woman protested her innocence, claiming that the two men must have climbed across the church roof and jumped from there onto the half-roof at the side of Blair's house. “It has happened before, senar” she said resignedly, “which is why the master has his strong room.”

“What do we do now?” Harper still held the rag against his head.

“I'll make a formal complaint,” Sharpe said. “It won't help, but I'll make it anyway.” He went back to the Citadel where, in the guardroom, a surly clerk took down a list of the stolen property. Sharpe, as he dictated the missing items, knew that he wasted his time.

“You wasted your time,” Blair said when he came home. “Place is full of bloody thieves. That clerk will already have thrown your list away. You'll have to buy more clothes tomorrow.”

“Or look for the bloody thieves,” Harper, his head sore and bandaged, growled threateningly.

“You'll never find them,” Blair said. “They brand some of them on the forehead with a big L, but it doesn't do any good.” Sharpe guessed the L stood for ladron, thief. “That's why I have a strong room,” Blair went on, “it would take more than a couple of cutthroats to break in there.” He had fetched a bottle of gin back from the H.M.S. Charybdis and in consequence was a happy man. By nightfall he was also a drunken man who once again offered Sharpe and Harper the run of his servants. “None of them are poxed. They'd better not be, God help them, or I'll have the skin off their backs.”

“I'll manage without,” Sharpe said.

“Your loss, Sharpe, your loss.”

That night the clouds rolled back from the coastal plain so that the dawn brought a wondrous clean sky and a sharp, bright sun that rose to silhouette the jagged peaks of the Andes. There was something almost springlike in the air—something so cleansing and cheerful that Sharpe, waking, felt almost glad to be in Chile, then he suddenly remembered the events of the previous day, and knew that he must spoil this bright clean day by buying a new greatcoat, new breeches, a coat, shirts, small clothes and a razor. At least, he thought grimly, he had been wearing his good kerseymere coat for his abortive visit to Bautista, which had served to save the coat from the thieves and to save Sharpe from Lucille's wrath. She was forever telling him he should dress more stylishly, and the dark green kerseymere coat had been the first success in her long and difficult campaign. The coat had become somewhat soiled with horse manure when Sharpe rolled in the stableyard, but he supposed that would brush out.

He pulled on shirt, breeches and boots, then carried the coat downstairs so that one of Blair's servants could attack it with a brush. Blair was already up, drinking bitter coffee in the parlor and with him, to Sharpe's utter surprise, was Captain Marquinez. The Captain had a gold-edged shako tucked under one arm. The shako had a tall white plume that shivered as Marquinez offered Sharpe a low bow. “Good morning, Colonel!”

“Got our travel permits, have you?” was Sharpe's surly greeting.

“What a lovely morning!” Marquinez smiled wiui delight. “Mister Blair has offered me coffee, but I cannot accept, for we are summoned to the Captain-General's audience.”

“Summoned?” Sharpe asked. Blair clearly thought Sharpe's hostility was inappropriate, for he was making urgent signals that Sharpe should behave more gently.

Marquinez smiled. “Summoned indeed, Colonel.”

Sharpe poured himself coffee. “I'm an Englishman, Captain. You don't summon me.”

“What Colonel Sharpe means—” Blair began.

“Colonel Sharpe reproves me, and quite rightly.” The plume nodded as Marquinez bowed again. “It would give Captain-General Bautista the most exquisite delight, Colonel, if you and Mister Harper would favor him with your attendance at this morning's audience.”

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said. And wondered just what sort of man he would find when he at last met Vivar's enemy.

Bautista's audience hall was a palatial room dominated by a carved and painted royal coat of arms that hung above the fireplace. Incongruously, for it was not cold, a small fire burned in a grate that was dwarfed by the huge stone hearth. The windows at either end of the hall were open; those at the east, where the early sun now dazzled, looked onto the Angel Tower and its execution yard, while the western windows offered a view across the defenses to the swirling waters of the Valdivia River. The whole room, with its blackened beams, lime-washed walls, bright escutcheon and stone pillars, was intended as a projection of Spanish royal power, a grandiose echo of the Escorial.

The room's real power, though, lay not in the monarch's coat of arms, nor in the royal portraits that hung on the high walls, but in the energetic figure that paced up and down, up and down, behind a long table that was set before the fireplace and at which four aides-de-camp sat and took dictation. Watching the pacing man, and listening to his every word, was an audience of seventy or eighty officers. This was evidently how Captain-General Bautista chose to do his business: openly, efficiently, crisply.

Miguel Bautista was a tall, thin man with black hair which was oiled and brushed back so that it clung like a sleek cap to his narrow skull. His face was thin and pale, dominated by a long nose and the dark eyes of a predator. There was, Sharpe thought, a glint of quick intelligence in those eyes, but there was something else too, a carelessness, as though this young man had seen much of the world's wickedness and was amused by it. He wore a uniform that was new to Sharpe. It was an elegantly cut cavalry tunic of plain black cloth, but with no symbols of rank except for two modest epaulettes of silver chain. His breeches were black, as were his cavalry boots and even the cloth covering of his scabbard. It was a simple uniform, but one which stood in stark contrast to the colorful uniforms of the other officers in the room.

Some of those officers had evidently come as petitioners, others because they had information that Bautista needed, and yet more because they were on the Captain-General's staff. All were necessary to complete what Sharpe realized was a piece of theater. This was Bautista's demonstration, held at a deliberately inconvenient early hour, to show that he was the enthusiastic master of every detail that mattered in his royal province. He paced incessantly, casting off the matters of business one after the other with a swift efficiency. A Lieutenant of Cavalry was given permission to marry, while a Major of Artillery was refused leave to travel home to Spain. “Does Major Rodriguez think that no other officer ever had a dying mother?” There was laughter from the audience at that sally, and Sharpe saw Colonel Ruiz, the bombastic artilleryman who had sailed on the Espiritu Santo, laughing with the rest.

Bautista called various officers to make their reports. A tall, gray-haired Captain detailed the ammunition reserves in the Perrunque arsenal, then a Medical Officer reported on the number of men who had fallen sick in the previous month. Bautista listened keenly, noting that the Puerto Crucero garrison had shown a marked increase in fever cases. “Is there a contagion there?”

“We're not sure, Your Excellency.”

“Then find out!” Bautista's voice was high and sharp. “Are the townspeople affected? Or just the garrison? Surely someone has thought to ask that simple question, have they not?”

“I don't know, Your Excellency,” the hapless Medical Officer replied.

“Then find out! I want answers! Answers! Is it the food? The garrison's water supply? The air? Or just morale?” He stabbed a finger at the Medical Officer. “Answers! Get me answers!”

It was an impressive display, yet Sharpe felt unconvinced by it. It was almost as if Bautista was going through the motions of government merely so that no one could accuse him of dereliction when his province vanished from the maps of the Spanish Empire. He was, Sharpe thought, a young man full of self-importance, but so far Sharpe could see no evidence of anything worse—of, say, the cruelty that made Bautista's name so feared. The Captain-General had resumed pacing up and down before the small and redundant fire, stabbing more questions into his audience as he paced. How many cattle were in Val-divia's slaughter yards? Had the supply ships arrived from Chiloe? Was there any news of Ruiz's regiment? None? How many more weeks must they wait for those extra guns? Had the Puerto Crucero garrison test-fired their heated shot, and if so, what was their rate of fire? How long had it taken to heat the furnace from cold to operational heat? General Bautista suddenly whirled on Sharpe and pointed his finger, just as if Sharpe was one of the subservient officers who responded so meekly to each of Bautista's demands. “You were at Waterloo?” The question was rapped out in the same tone that the General had used to ask about the monthly sick returns.

“Yes, sir.”

“Why did Napoleon lose there?”

The question took Sharpe somewhat by surprise, despite Marquinez having warned him that the Captain-General was fascinated by Napoleon and his battles. Did Bautista see himself as a new Napoleon, Sharpe wondered? It was possible. The Captain-General was still a young man and, like his hero, an artillery officer.

“Well?” Bautista chivied Sharpe.

“He underestimated the British infantry,” Sharpe said.

“And you, of course, were a British infantryman?” Bautista asked in a sarcastic tone, provoking more sycophantic laughter from his audience. Bautista cut the laughter short with a swift chop of his hand. “I heard that he lost the battle because he waited too long before beginning to fight.”

“If he'd have started earlier,” Sharpe said, “we'd have beaten him sooner.” That, Sharpe knew, was not true. If Bonaparte had opened the battle at dawn he would have ridden victorious into Brussels at dusk, but Sharpe would be damned before he gave Bautista the satisfaction of agreeing with him.

The Captain-General had walked close to Sharpe and was staring at the Englishman with what seemed a genuine curiosity. Sharpe was a tall man, but even so he had to look up to meet the dark eyes of the Captain-General. “What was it like?” Bautista asked.

“Waterloo?” Sharpe felt tongue-tied.

“Yes! Of course. What was it like to be there?”

'Jesus,“ Sharpe said helplessly. He did not know if he could describe such a day, certainly he had never done so to anyone except those, like Harper, who had shared the experience and who could therefore see beyond the tale's incoherence. Sharpe's fiercest memory of the day was simply one of terror; the terror of standing under the massive concussion of the French bombardment that, hour by hour, had ground down the British line till there were no reserves left. The remainder of the day had faded into unimportance. The opening of the battle had been full of excitement and motion, yet it was not those heart-stirring moments that Sharpe remembered when he woke sweating in the night, but rather that inhuman mincing machine of the French artillery; the lurid flickering of its massive cannon flames in the smoke bank, the pathetic cries of the dying, the thunder of the roundshot in the overheated air, the violence of the soil spewed up by the striking shots and the stomach-emptying terror of standing under the unending cannonade that had punched and crashed and pounded down the bravest man's endurance. Even the battle's ending, that astonishing triumph in which tired and seemingly beaten men had risen from the mud to rout the I finest troops of France, had paled in Sharpe's memory beside the nightmarish flicker of those guns. ”It was bad," Sharpe said at last.