CHAPTER 10
Richard Sharpe lay on thin, wiry grass and propped his telescope on his pack. He slid the brass shutter aside from the eyepiece, adjusted the tubes, and stared in awed amazement.
He watched an army marching.
He had seen the smear of dust in the sky, rising higher as the morning moved towards midday’s heat, and the dust had looked like the haze of a great grass fire in the far south.
He had ridden towards the haze, going slowly for fear of enemy cavalry patrols, and now, in the early afternoon, he. lay on the low summit of a small hill and stared at the men and animals that had smudged the great plume of dust across the heavens.
The French were marching eastwards. They were marching towards Burgos, towards France.
The road itself was left for the heavy traffic, for the wagons and the guns and the carriages of the generals. Beside the road, trampling the scanty crops, marched the infantry. He moved the telescope right, the far uniforms a blur of colour in his eye, and steadied it where the road came from a small village. Tumbrils and caissons, limbers and ambulances, wagons and more wagons, the horses and oxen dipping their heads with the effort of hauling their loads under the hot Spanish sun. In the village was the tower of an old castle, its grey stone broken by spreading ivy, and Sharpe saw white smoke rising from the tower, mingling with the dust, and knew that the French had looted and now burned the tower. They were abandoning this countryside, going eastward, retreating.
He pushed the telescope left, turning it to look as far to the east as he could see, to where, like a tiny grey blur on the horizon the topmost stones of Burgos’ fortress showed above some trees, and everywhere the road was crammed with men and horses. The infantry moved slowly, like men who hated to retreat. Their women and children slogged along beside them. Cavalry walked beside their steeds, under orders to save their horses’ strength, while only a few squadrons, lancers mostly, whose pennants were stained white with dust, trotted on the flanks of the huge column to protect it against Spanish sharpshooters.
Sharpe rested the telescope. Without the benefit of the fine glass the French army looked like a black snake winding across the valley. He knew he saw a retreat, but he did not know why the enemy retreated. He had heard no guns like thunder in the distance that would have told him of a great battle that Wellington had won. He just watched the great beast snake in the valley, smearing the sky white, and he had no idea why it was here, or where it went, or where his own forces were.
He wriggled back from the skyline, snapped the telescope shut, and turned to the horse which he had tethered to a stone field marker. Hogan had lent him a fine, strong, patient stallion called Carbine, who now watched Sharpe and twitched his long, black, undocked tail. He was a lucky horse, Sharpe thought, because the rule in the British army was that all horses should have their tails cut short, but Carbine had been left his intact so that, at a distance, he would seem to the French to be one of their own. He had been corn fed too, strengthened through the winter to carry one of Hogan’s men who would spy deep behind French lines. Now he carried Sharpe to find a lady.
Though if the Marquesa was in Burgos, Sharpe reflected as he walked towards Carbine, she would be impossible to reach. The French army was falling back on the city, and by tonight Burgos would be surrounded by the enemy. He could only hope that Angel was safe.
The boy was sixteen. His father, a cooper, had died trying to save his wife from the attentions of French Dragoons. Angel had watched his parents die, had seen his house and his father’s workshop burned to cinders, and that same night, armed only with a knife, he had killed his first Frenchman. He had been lucky to escape. He had twisted into the darkness on his young legs as the bullets of the French sentries thrashed about him in the growing rye. He had told Sharpe the story diffidently. ‘I put the knife in my parents’ grave, señor.’ He had buried his parents himself, then gone to find the Partisans. He had been just thirteen.
Instead of Partisans he had met one of Hogan’s Exploring Officers, the men who, in full uniform, galloped their swift horses deep in enemy country. That officer had passed the boy back to Hogan and, in the last three years, Angel had carried messages between the British and the Partisans. ‘I’m getting old for that now.’
Sharpe had chuckled. ‘Old? At sixteen?’
‘Now the French see I am a man. They think I might be an enemy.’ Angel had shrugged. ‘Before that I was just a boy, they took no notice of me.’
This day, as Sharpe had lain and watched the French army trudge towards Burgos, Angel had gone into the city. His horse, a gift from Hogan, had been left with Sharpe, together with the rifle that the boy carried. He refused wages from Major Hogan, wanting only his food, shelter when he was with the British, and the ‘gun that kills’. He had been offered a smoothbore musket, and had scathingly rejected it. He wanted only a Baker Rifle and, now that one was his, he looked after it lovingly, polishing its woodwork and meticulously cleaning its lock. He claimed that he and the rifle had killed two Frenchmen for every year of his life.
He was incurious about his task with Sharpe. The Golden Whore meant nothing to him, and he did not care if the Marqués de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba was dead. Such things were boring to Angel. He cared only that he had been told that this job was important, that success would hurt his enemies, and that the search for the Marquesa would take him where there were more Frenchmen to be killed. He was glad to be working for Sharpe. He had heard that Sharpe had killed many Frenchmen. Sharpe had smiled. ‘There’s more to life than killing Frenchmen.’
‘I know, señor.’
‘You do?’
Angel had nodded. ‘But I do not wish to marry yet.’ He had looked up from the fire into Sharpe’s eyes. ‘You think you will chase the French over the mountains? Back to France?’
Sharpe had nodded. ‘Probably.’
‘I shall join your Rifles then.’ He smiled. ‘I shall march into Paris and remember my parents.’
Angel would not be the first Spanish youth to join the British Rifles; indeed some companies had a dozen Spaniards who had begged to be allowed into the elite ranks. ‘Sweet William’ Frederickson said the only problem with the Spanish recruits was getting them to stop fighting. ’They want to win the war in a day.‘ Sharpe, listening to Angel talk of his parents, understood the zeal with which they fought.
Sharpe rode back to the wooded valley where he would wait for Angel to return from the city. He unsaddled Carbine and tethered him to a pine trunk. He dutifully inspected the horse’s hooves, wishing that Angel, who was so much more efficient at looking after the horses, was here to help, then he carried the saddle up to the small clearing that was their rendezvous.
Sharpe waited. Dusk stretched shadows among the pine trunks and a wind rattled the branches overhead. He scouted the margins of the valley in the twilight, looking for humans, but seeing only a vixen and her cubs who played a snarling game at the foot of a sandy bank. He went back to the horses, put his rifle beside him, and waited for Angel’s return.
The boy came in the dawn, a grey shadow in the trees, bringing with him a cheese wrapped in vine leaves, a new loaf, and his news. Before he would say a word to Sharpe about La Marquesa he insisted on retrieving his rifle and inspecting it in the half-light as though one night’s separation would have somehow changed the weapon. Satisfied, he looked up at the Rifle officer. ‘She’s disappeared.’
Sharpe felt a plunging of his hopes. For these four days since he had parted from Hogan he had feared that Helene would have gone back to France. ‘Disappeared-?’
Angel told the story. She had left the city in a carriage and, though the carriage had come back, La Marquesa had not returned. ‘The French were angry. They had cavalry searching everywhere. They looked in all the villages, they offered a reward of gold, but nothing. They increased the reward, but nothing. She’s gone.’
Sharpe swore, and the boy grinned.
‘You don’t trust me, eh?’ He laughed. He was a
start lingly handsome boy, curly haired and strong faced. His dark eyes shone in the light of the fire that Sharpe had lit as dawn came. ‘I know where she is, señor.’
‘Where?’
‘The Convent of the Heavens, Santa Monica.’ Angel held up a hand to ward off Sharpe’s question. ‘I think.’
‘You think?’
Angel took the wine flask and drank. ‘The priests took her, yes? They and the monks. Everyone knows it, but no one talks. They say the Inquisition was here.’ He crossed himself, and Sharpe thought of the Inquisitor who had come with the letter for the Marqués, Angel smiled. ‘They don’t know where they took her, but I do.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I am Angel, yes?’ The boy laughed. ‘I saw a man who knows me. He tells the Partisans what troops are marching towards the hills. I trust him.’ The words should have sounded odd coming from a sixteen year old, but they did not seem strange coming from this boy who had risked his life since he was thirteen. Angel took some loose tobacco from a pocket, a scrap of paper, and, in Spanish fashion, rolled a makeshift cigar. He leaned forward and the tip of the cigar flared as he sucked on a flame of the fire. ‘This man says that he has heard that the woman was taken to Santa Monica, to the convent. He heard from the Partisans.’ Angel blew smoke into the air. ‘The Partisans are guarding the convent.’
‘The Partisans?’
‘Si. You have heard of El Matarife?’
Sharpe shook his head. The hills of Spain were filled with Partisan leaders who took fanciful nicknames. He tried to think what the word meant. ‘A man who kills animals?’
‘Yes. A slaughterman. You should have heard of him. He is famous.’
‘And he guards the convent?’
Angel sucked on the disintegrating tube of tobacco. ‘So it is said. He will guard the mesa, not the convent.’
‘The table?’
‘The convent is on a mountain, yes? Very high with a flat top, a mesa. There are few paths up, señor, so it is easy to guard.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Two days’ ride? There.’ He pointed to the north-east.
‘Have you been there?’
‘No.’ Angel disgustedly threw the remains of his cigar into the fire. He had somehow not mastered the knack of twisting the paper and tobacco exactly right. ‘I have heard of it though.’
Sharpe was trying to make sense, any kind of sense, from Angel’s news. The Inquisition? That coincidence made the boy’s tale seem true, but why should the Inquisition want to kidnap Helene? Or why, for that matter, would the Slaughterman be guarding the convent where she was held?
He asked the boy, and Angel shrugged. ‘Who knows? He is not a man you can ask.’
‘What kind of man is he?’
The boy frowned. ‘He kills Frenchmen.’ He paid the compliment dubiously. ‘But he kills his own people, too, yes? He once shot twelve men of a village because the villagers had refused his men food. He rode in at the siesta time and shot them. Even Mina cannot control him.’ Angel spoke of the man who had been made general of all the Partisans. Mina had been known to execute men such as El Matarife who persecuted their own countrymen. Angel was making himself another cigar. ‘The French are scared of him. It’s said that he once put the heads of fifty Frenchmen on the Great Road, one every mile through the mountains so the French would find them. That was near Vitoria where he comes from.’ The boy laughed. ‘He kills slowly. They say he has a leather coat made from French skins. Some say he is mad.’
‘Can we find him?’
‘Si.’ Angel said it as though the question was unnecessary. ‘So we ride to the mountains?’
‘We ride to the mountains.’
They rode north east to where the mountains became dizzying crags, the hunting grounds of eagles, a land of awesome valleys and of waterfalls that seethed from the low clouds of morning to fall scores of feet into cold, upland streams.
They rode north east into a land where the inhabitants were few, and those inhabitants so poor and frightened that they fled when they saw two strange horsemen coming. Some of the people here, Angel said, would not even know there was a war on. ‘They’re not even Spanish!’ He said it scathingly.
‘Not Spanish?’
‘They’re Basques. They have their own language.’
‘So who are they?’
Angel shrugged dismissively. ‘They live here.’ He obviously had nothing more to say about them.
Angel, it seemed to Sharpe, was fretting. They had come into these northern mountains and were far from the French. They were far from the war and, from what Angel had heard in Burgos, far from the excitement.
The rumours in Burgos said that the British had at last marched, and were attacking in the north. The French northern army was retreating and Sharpe had seen the vanguard of that army as it approached Burgos. Angel feared the campaign would be over before he could kill again. Sharpe laughed. ‘It won’t be over.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise. How do we find El Matarife?’
‘He finds us, señor. Do you think he doesn’t know there’s an Englishman in the hills?’
‘Just remember not to call me Sharpe.’
‘Si, señor.’ Angel grinned. ‘What are you called now?’
Sharpe smiled. He remembered the suave, regretful officer who had conducted his prosecution. ‘Vaughn. Major Vaughn.’
He rode between high rocks, beneath the eagles, and he searched for the Marquesa and for the Slaughterman.
El Matarife, like Angel, fretted at being so far from the richer pickings that were to be had to the south. These high, deep valleys were poor, there were few French to be ambushed, and little to be stolen from the meagre villages. He had two French prisoners with him, playthings for his entertainment.
The news of the Englishman was brought to him by three of his men. El Matarife occupied an inn, or what passed in this miserable place for an inn, and he scowled at the three men as though they were responsible for the Englishman’s coming. ‘He said he wanted to speak with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘He did not say why?’
‘Only that his General had sent him.’
El Matarife grunted. ‘Not before time, eh?’ His lieutenants nodded. Wellington had sent messengers to other Partisan leaders, requesting their co-operation, and the Slaughterman presumed that his turn had come.
But he could not be sure of it. In the convent, thousands of feet above the valley, was La Puta Dorada. She had been brought by his brother who had warned El Matarife that the French might search for her, but the Inquisitor had said nothing about any Englishman. El Matarife could understand a man searching for the woman. He had seen her in the carriage and, even dishevelled and tearful, she had been beautiful. ‘Why give her to the nuns?’ he had asked.
His brother had snapped at him. ‘She has to take the vows, don’t you understand? It must be legal! She must become a nun! She must take her vows, nothing else matters!’
The Inquisitor had left his brother with instructions that no one was to be allowed close to the convent, and that, if anyone asked about the Marquesa, her presence was to be denied. She was to be buried and forgotten and left to Christ.
Now El Matarife wondered whether the Englishman had come looking for the whore of gold. ‘What is he called?’
‘Vaughn. Major Vaughn.’
‘He’s alone?’
‘He has a boy with him.’
One of his lieutenants saw the concern on El Matarife’s face and shrugged. ‘Just kill him. Who’ll know?’
‘You’re a fool. Your mother sucked an ass.’ El Matarife jabbed at the fire with a sword point. It was cold in these deep valleys, and the fire in the inn’s main room did little to help. He looked back to the men who had spoken with the Englishman the night before. ‘He said nothing of any woman?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure he’s English? Not a Frenchman?’
The men shrugged.
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El Matarife peered through the window, stooping so he could see to the very top of the huge, grey slab of cliff where the Convent of the Heavens was perched. The presence of La Marquesa in that cold building was supposed to be a secret, though El Matarife knew better than most that there were few secrets in Spain’s countryside. Someone would have talked.
He could kill the Englishman, but that was a last resort. The English were the source of gold, guns and ammunition, landing them on the hidden beaches of the northern coast at night. If an Englishman was to be killed, then El Matarife had a suspicion that a reckoning might be made; that his men would be hunted and punished by other Partisans, yet, if he had to kill the Englishman, he would, though he would rather send the man away satisfied, suspicion allayed, so he could continue this wearisome watch uninterruptedly.
‘Where is this Major Vaughn?’
‘At the two bridges.’
‘Bring him tonight.’ The Slaughterman looked at one of his lieutenants. ‘Bring the prisoners. We shall entertain our Englishman.’
‘The woman too?’
‘Especially her.’ El Matarife smiled. ‘If he has come for a woman then he can have her!’ He laughed. He had fooled the French for four years and now he would fool an Englishman. He shouted for wine and waited for the night.
Night fell swiftly in the depths of the valley beneath the Convent of the Heavens. When the peaks were still touched red by the last daylight it was already dark at the inn that El Matarife called his headquarters. In front of the inn, and lit by smoking torches, was an area of beaten earth. Sharpe and Angel, brought to the place by silent guides, were led to the lit space.
A chain was thrown onto the patch of earth. It lay there, ten feet of rusting links, and at its far end, nervous and dressed only in ragged trousers, stood a prisoner.
A Partisan picked up the chain and looped one end about the man’s left wrist. He tied it clumsily, jerked on it to make sure it was secure, then stepped back. He took from his belt a long knife and tossed it at the man’s feet.