“The Espiritu Santo won’t go upstream?”
“The river’s too shallow.” Lieutenant Otero, who had charge of the frigate, paused to listen to the leadsman who was calling the depth. “Sometimes the boatmen will take you halfway and then threaten to put you ashore in the wilderness if you won’t pay more money. If that happens, the best thing to do is to shoot one of the Indian crew members. No one objects to the killing of a savage, and you’ll find the death has a remarkably salutary effect on the other boatmen.”
Otero turned away to tend to the ship. Fort Niebla was firing a salute which one of the long nine pounders at the frigate’s bow returned. The gunfire echoed flatly from the steep hills where a few stunted trees were permanently windbent toward the north. Seamen were streaming aloft to furl the sails after their long passage. There was a crash as the starboard anchor was struck loose, then a grating rumble as fathoms of chain clattered through the hawse. The fragrant scents of the land vainly tried to defeat the noxious carapace of the Espiritu Santo’s cesspit-laced-with-powder stench. The frigate, her salute fired, checked as the anchor bit into the harbor’s bottom, then turned as the tide pulled the fouled hull slowly around. The smoke of the gun salute writhed and drifted across the bay. “Welcome to Chile,” Otero said.
“Can you believe it?” Harper said with amazement. “We’re in the New World!”
An hour later, their seabags and money chest under the guard of two burly seamen, Sharpe and Harper stepped ashore onto the New World. They had reached their voyage’s end in the quaking land of giants and pygmies, of unicorns and ghouls, in the rebellious land that lay under the volcanoes’ fire and the devil’s flail. They were in Chile.
CHAPTER 2
George Blair, British Consul in Valdivia, blinked shortsightedly 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, which was known simply as the Citadel. Blair had placed Louisa’s bribe money, all eighteen hundred golden guineas, in his strong room which 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 percent. “Bastards,” Blair had commented when he heard of the impost. “It’s supposed to be just three percent.”
“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 percent!” Then, over a plate of sugared cakes and glasses of wine brought by his Indian servants, Blair had welcomed Sharpe to Valdivia with the 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 parlor 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 of Sharpe. 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 wars had left as many Colonels as they 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 honors 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 northeast 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 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 rumors. 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 rumor 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 naiveté. “You don’t arrest a man for breathing, do you? Everyone’s corrupt here! 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 harbor 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 harbors 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’s 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 harbor 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,” chuckled Blair, unable to resist admiration for a fellow Briton, “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 overgroomed puppy. He doesn’t make the decision. Bautista’s the one who’ll say yea or nay.” Blair jerked a thumb toward his padlocked strong room. “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 toward the two tall strangers who strode so noisily toward the Citadel. A dozen Indians, their squat faces blank as carvings, sat in the shade of a mounted statue which stood in the very center 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, and 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 toward a group of women who, standing in the shade of the striped awnings that 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 that 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 toward 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 toward 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.”
r /> “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 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 medieval castle turret in the very center of the fortifications.