“Are the savages cannibals?” Sharpe asked.
“God knows. I can’t make head or tail of them,” Cochrane grumbled. He wanted Sharpe to forget Vivar, and instead enroll for the assault on Valdivia. “Half the bloody Spanish army searched that valley,” Cochrane protested, “and they found nothing! Why do you think you can do better?”
“Because I’m not the Spanish army.”
The two men were standing on the highest seaward rampart of the captured fortress. Above them the flag of the Chilean Republic snapped in the cold southern wind, while beneath them, in the inner harbor, the Espiritu Santo lay grounded on a sandy shoal that was only flooded at the very highest tides. A stout line had been attached to the Espiritu Santo’s mainmast, then run ashore to where a team of draught horses, helped by fifty men, had taken the strain, pulling the frigate over, so that now she lay careened on her port side and with her wounded flank facing the sky. Carpenters from the town and from Cochrane’s flagship were busy patching the damage done by the exploding Mary Starbuck. The Espiritu Santo was now called the Kitty, named in honor of Cochrane’s wife. Her old crew had been divided; Captain Ardiles, with his officers and those seamen who had not volunteered to join the ranks of the rebels, were locked in the prison wing of the citadel, while the other seamen, about fifty in all, had volunteered to join Cochrane’s ranks. Those fifty would all be part of the crew that would take the Kitty north to attack Valdivia.
Among the plunder captured in Puerto Crucero had been a Spanish pinnace, with six small guns, which Cochrane had sent north with news of his victory. The pinnace, a fast and handy sailor, had orders to avoid all strange sails, but just to reach the closest rebel-held port and from there to send the news of Puerto Crucero’s fall to Santiago. Cochrane had also written to Bernardo O’Higgins requesting that more men be sent to help him assault Valdivia. If O’Higgins would give him just one battalion of troops, Cochrane promised success. “I won’t get the battalion,” Cochrane gloomily told Sharpe, “but I have to ask.”
“They won’t give you troops?” Sharpe asked in surprise.
“They’ll send a few, a token few. But they won’t send enough to guarantee victory. They don’t want victory, remember. They want me either to refuse to obey their orders or to make a hash out of obedience. They want rid of me, but with your help, Sharpe, I might yet—”
“I’m riding north,” Sharpe interrupted, “to look for Don Blas.”
“Look for him after you’ve helped me capture Valdivia!” Cochrane suggested brightly. “Think of the glory we’ll win! My God, Sharpe, men will talk about us forever! Cochrane and Sharpe, conquerors of the Pacific!”
“It isn’t my battle,” Sharpe said, “and besides, you’re going to lose it.”
“You didn’t believe I’d capture this place.” Cochrane swept a victor’s arm around the vista of the citadel’s ramparts.
“True,” Sharpe allowed, “but only because you used a trick to get your attackers in close, and that trick won’t work two times.”
“Maybe it will,” Cochrane smiled. For a few seconds the Scotsman was silent, then his desire to reveal his plans overcame his instinct for caution. “You remember telling me about those artillery officers who crossed the Atlantic with you?”
Sharpe nodded. He had described to Lord Cochrane how Colonel Ruiz and his officers had sailed ahead of their men, which meant, Cochrane now said, that the two slow transports carrying the men and the regiment’s guns were probably still lumbering across the Atlantic. “And I’ll wager a wee fortune that if I disguise the Kitty and the O’Higgins, I can get right inside Valdivia Harbor by pretending to be those two transports.” His voice, eager and excited, was filled with amusement at the thought of again deceiving the Spaniards. “You saw how the garrison collapsed here! You think morale is any better in Valdivia?”
“Probably not,” Sharpe admitted.
“So join me! I promised you a share of the prize money. That bastard Bautista took almost everything of value out of here, so it must all be in Valdivia, and that includes your money, Sharpe. Are you going to let the bastard just take it?”
“I’m going to look for Don Blas,” Sharpe said doggedly, “then go home.”
“You won’t fight for money?” Cochrane sounded astonished. “Not that I blame you. I tell myself I fight for more than money, but that’s the only thing these rogues want.” He nodded down at his men who were scattered about the citadel. “So, for their sakes, I’ll fight for money and pay them their wages, and the lawyers in Santiago can whistle at the wind for all I care.” The thought of lawyers plunged the mercurial Scotsman into instant unhappiness. “Have you ever seen a lawyer apologize? I haven’t, and I don’t suppose anyone else has. It must be like watching a snake eat its own vomit. You won’t help me force a lawyer to apologize?”
“I have to—”
“Find Blas Vivar,” Cochrane finished the sentence sourly.
A week after the citadel’s capture the reports of atrocities and ambush began to decline. A few refugees still arrived from the distant parts of the province, and even a handful of the fort’s defeated garrison had come back rather than face the vengeful savages, but it seemed to Sharpe that the countryside north of Puerto Crucero was settling back into a wary silence. The savages had gone back to their forests, the settlers were creeping out of hiding to see what was left of their farms and the Spaniards were licking their wounds in Valdivia.
Sharpe decided it was safe to ride north. He assembled what he needed for his journey—guns, blankets, salted fish and dried meat—and earmarked two horses captured in the citadel’s stables and two good saddles from among the captured booty. He persuaded Major Suarez to describe the valley where Don Blas had ridden into mystery, and Suarez even drew a map, telling Sharpe what parts of the valley had been most thoroughly searched for Blas Vivar’s body. Cochrane made one last feeble effort to persuade Sharpe to stay, then wished him luck. “When will you leave?”
“At dawn,” Sharpe said. But then, as night fell red across the ocean to touch the sentinels’ weapons with a scarlet sheen, everything changed again.
Don Blas was not dead after all. But living.
His name was Marcos. Just Marcos. He was a thin young man with the face of a starveling and the eyes of a cutthroat. He had been an infantryman in the Puerto Crucero garrison, one of the men who had poured such a disciplined fire at Cochrane’s attack, but who, after the citadel’s fall, had fled northward, only to be driven back by his fears of rampaging Indians. Major Miller had interrogated Marcos, and Miller now fetched Marcos to Sharpe. They spoke around a brazier on Puerto Crucero’s ramparts and Marcos, in the strangely accented Spanish of the native Chileans, told his story of how Don Blas Vivar, Count of Mouromorto and erstwhile Captain-General of Chile, still lived. Marcos told the tale nervously, his eyes flicking from Sharpe to Miller, from Miller to Harper, then from Harper to Cochrane who, summoned by Miller, had come to hear Marcos’s story.
Marcos had been stationed in Valdivia’s Citadel when Blas Vivar disappeared. He knew some of the cavalrymen who had formed part of the escort that had accompanied Captain-General Vivar on his southern tour of inspection. That escort had been commanded by a Captain Lerrana, who was now Colonel Lerrana and one of Captain-General Bautista’s closest friends. Marcos accompanied this revelation with a meaningful wink, then paused to scratch vigorously at his crotch. An interval of silence followed, during which he pursued and caught a particularly troublesome louse that he squashed bloodily between his thumb and fingernail before hitching the rent in his breeches roughly closed.
“Hurry now! Don’t keep the Colonel waiting!” Miller barked.
Marcos flinched as if he expected to be hit, then reminded Sharpe that Captain-General Vivar had been riding on a tour of inspection that was supposed to end at the citadel in Puerto Crucero. “From there, señor, he would go back to Valdivia by ship. But no one came back! Neither the Captain-General, nor Captain Lerrana. No one. Not even the tr
oopers! No one came back till after we heard the Captain-General had vanished, then General Bautista arrived from Puerto Crucero, and Captain Lerrana came with him, but by then he was a Colonel and in a new uniform.” Marcos clearly felt that the detail of Lerrana’s new uniform was exceedingly telling. He described it in detail, how it had thickly cushioned epaulettes from which hung gold chains, and how it had gold-colored lace on the coat, and high boots that were new and shining.
“Tell him about the prisoner!” Miller interrupted the admiring description of the uniform.
“Ah, yes!” Marcos snatched another bite from his sausage. “General Bautista was the senior officer in the province, so he came to take over the Captain-General’s duties. He came by ship, you understand, and his men came by boat up the river to the Citadel in Valdivia. They came by day, and we made an honor guard for the General. But one boat came at night. In it, señor, was a prisoner who had come from Puerto Crucero, a prisoner so secret that no one even knew his name! The prisoner was hurried into the Angel Tower in the Citadel. You have to understand, señor, that the Angel Tower is very old, very mysterious! It used to be a terrible prison! They say the ghosts of all the dead cling to its stones. Once a man was put in there he only came out as a corpse or an angel.” Marcos superstitiously crossed himself. “They stopped using the tower as a prison in my grandfather’s time, and now no one will step inside for fear of the spirits, but that is where the Captain-General’s prisoner was taken and, so far as I know, señor, he is still there. Or he was when I left.” Marcos ended the tale in a rush, then looked eagerly at Miller as though seeking praise for the telling.
“And you think Captain Vivar is that prisoner?” Sharpe asked Marcos.
Marcos nodded energetically. “I saw his face, señor. I was on duty at the inner gate, and they brought him past me to the door of the tower. I was ordered to turn around and not look, but I was in shadow and they did not see me. It was the Captain-General, I swear it.”
“God save Ireland,” Harper said under his breath.
Sharpe leaned back. “I wish I could believe him,” he spoke in English, to no one in particular.
“Of course you can believe him!” Cochrane said stoutly. “Who the hell else do you think Bautista’s got in there? The Virgin Mary?”
Marcos greedily bit into a hunk of bread, then looked alarmed as Sharpe leaned forward again.
“Did you ever see your cavalry friends from the Captain-General’s escort again?” Sharpe spoke Spanish again.
“Yes, señor.”
“What do they say happened to General Vivar?”
Marcos swallowed a half-chewed lump of bread, scratched his crotch, looked sideways at Miller, then shrugged. “They say that the Captain-General disappeared in a valley. There was a road that went down the valley’s side like this” —Marcos made a zig-zag motion with his right hand— “and that the Captain-General ordered them to wait at the top of the road while he went down into the valley. And that was it!”
“No gunfire?” Sharpe asked.
“No, señor.”
Sharpe turned to stare at the dark ocean. The sea’s roar came from the outer rocks. “I don’t know if I trust this man.”
Cochrane responded in Spanish, loud enough for Marcos to hear. “If the dog lies, we shall cut off his balls with a blunt razor. Are you telling lies, Marcos?”
“No, señor! I promise!”
“It still doesn’t make sense,” Sharpe said softly.
“Why not?” Cochrane stood beside him.
“Why would Vivar ride into the valley without an escort?”
“Because he didn’t want anyone to see who he was going to meet?” Cochrane suggested.
“Meaning?”
Cochrane drew Sharpe away from the others, escorting him down the ramparts. His Lordship drew on a cigar, its smoke whirling away in the southern wind. “I think he was meeting Bautista. This man’s story,” Cochrane jerked his cigar toward Marcos, “confirms other things I’ve been hearing. Your friend Vivar had learned something about Bautista, something that would break Bautista’s career. He was going to offer Bautista a choice: either a public humiliation or a private escape. I believe he went into the valley to meet Bautista, not knowing that Bautista would take neither choice, but had planned a coup d’état. That’s what we’re talking about, Sharpe! A coup d’état! And it worked brilliantly!”
“Then why didn’t Bautista kill Vivar?”
Cochrane shrugged. “How do I know? Perhaps he was frightened? If everything went wrong, and Vivar’s supporters rallied and opposed Bautista, he could still release Vivar and plead it was all a misunderstanding. That way, whatever other punishment he faced, Bautista would not have the iron collar around his neck, eh?” Cochrane grimaced in grotesque imitation of a man being garotted.
“But Don Blas must be dead by now!” Sharpe insisted. He had spoken in Spanish and loud enough for Marcos to hear.
“Señor?” Marcos’s frightened face was lit from beneath by the lurid glow of the brazier’s coals. “I think he was alive six weeks ago. That was when I left Valdivia, and I think General Vivar was alive then.”
“How can you tell?” Sharpe asked scornfully.
The infantryman paused, then spoke low so that his voice scarcely carried along the battlements. “I can tell, señor, because the new Captain-General likes to visit the Angel Tower. He goes alone, after dark. He has a key. The tower has only one door, you understand, and they say there is only one key, and General Bautista has that key. I have seen him go there. Sometimes he takes an aide with him, a Captain Marquinez, but usually he goes alone.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus.” Sharpe rested his hands on the parapet and raised his face to the sea wind. The detail of Marquinez had convinced him. Dear God, he thought, but let this man be lying, for it would be better for Don Blas if he were dead.
“What are you thinking?” Cochrane asked softly.
“I’m frightened this man Marcos is telling the truth.”
Cochrane listened for a few seconds to the sound of the sea, then he spoke gently. “He is telling the truth. We’re dealing with hatred. With madness. With cruelty on a monumental scale. Vivar and Bautista were enemies, that much we know. Vivar would have treated his enemy with honor, but Bautista does not deal with honor. I hear Bautista likes to see men suffer, so think how much he would like to watch his greatest enemy suffer! I think he goes to the Angel Tower at night to watch Vivar’s misery, to remind Vivar of his defeat, and to see Vivar’s humiliation.”
“Oh, Christ,” Sharpe said wearily.
“We know now why Vivar’s body was never found,” Cochrane said, “because plainly there is no body, and never was. Bautista had to pretend to make a search, for he dared not let anyone suspect Vivar was alive, but he must have been laughing every time he sent out another search party. And there’s something else,” Cochrane added with relish.
“Which is?”
“The Angel Tower is in Valdivia!” Cochrane chuckled, “So perhaps you had better come with me after all?”
“Oh, shit.” Sharpe said, for he was tired of war, and he wanted to go home. He felt a sudden overwhelming need to be in Normandy, to smell woollen clothes drying before the fire, to listen to the day’s small change of news and gossip, to doze before the kitchen fire while the cauldron bubbled. He had lost his taste for battle, and could find no relish for the kind of suicidal horror that Cochrane risked at Valdivia.
But Valdivia it would have to be, for Sharpe’s word was given, and so a last battle must be fought. To pluck a friend from madness.
PART III
VIVAR
The embers were gathering.
Reinforcements arrived from the northern provinces. They were not many, and none was officially despatched by the republic’s government in Santiago, yet still they came. A few owed Lord Cochrane for past favors, but most were adventurers who smelled plunder in Chile. They arrived at Puerto Crucero in small groups; the largest were brought back on Co
chrane’s pinnace, but others came by land, all daring the forests and the savages as they skirted the Spanish-held territory to gather at Puerto Crucero. After two weeks the newcomers had added just over two hundred volunteers to Cochrane’s meager forces, but Cochrane was convinced that his war would be won by just such small increments. At least half of the newcomers had fought in the European wars, and more than a few recognized Sharpe and hoped he would remember them. “I was in the breach at Badajoz with you,” a Welshman told Sharpe. “Bloody terrible, that was. But I’m glad you’re here, sir, it means we’re going to win again, does it not?”
Sharpe did not have the heart to tell the Welshman that he believed the attack on Valdivia to be suicidal. Instead he asked what had brought the man to this backside of the world. “Money, sir, money! What else?” The Welshman was confident that the royalists, having been defeated in Peru, Chile, and in the wide grasslands beyond the Andes, must have carried the spoils of all that empire back to Valdivia. “It’s their last great stronghold in South America!” the Welshman said, “so if we capture it, sir, we’ll all be rich. I shall buy a house and a farm in the border country, and I’ll find a fat wife, and I shall never want for a thing again. All it takes is money, sir, and all we need for money is this battle. Life is not for the weak or timid, sir, but for the brave!”
The Spaniards were making no effort to recapture Puerto Crucero. Instead they had pulled all their forces back into the Valdivia region, abandoning a score of towns and outlying forts. Cochrane’s volunteers arrived at Puerto Crucero with tales of burning stockades, deserted customs posts and empty guardhouses. “Maybe,” Sharpe suggested, “they’re planning a complete withdrawal?”
“Back to Spain, you mean?” Cochrane scorned the suggestion. “They’re waiting for reinforcements. Madrid won’t abandon Chile. They believe God gave them this empire as a reward for slaughtering all those Muslims in the fifteenth century, and what God gives, kings keep. No, they’re not withdrawing, Sharpe, they’re just planning more wickedness. They know we’re going to attack them, so they’re drawing in their horns and getting their guns ready.” He rubbed his hands with glee. “All those guns and men in one place, just waiting to be captured!”