MacAuley was plainly enjoying the tirade. The Dominican, whose piety had stirred up the whirlwind, tried to ignore it. Suarez looked scared, while Harper, who had no love of priests, laughed aloud.
"Christ on his cross!" Cochrane's anger was ebbing. "I'd rather roast in hell with a battalion of damned soldiers than sip nectar in heaven alongside a thieving lawyer or a poison-filled priest."
"You sound like Napoleon," Sharpe said.
Cochrane's head snapped up as though Sharpe had struck him, except the Scotsman's face betrayed nothing but pleasure. "If only I was indeed like him," he said warmly, then strode to the deepening grave where one of the soldiers had evidently reached the coffin, for the nauseating stench that had so repelled Sharpe and Harper when they had excavated the grave before now filled the church choir again. The Spanish soldier who had broken through the grave's crust turned away retching. Suarez was gasping for breath, and only Cochrane seemed unmoved. "Get on with it!" he snapped at the prisoners.
The three Spanish prisoners could not finish the job. Terror, superstition, or just the rank stink of the decaying body was making them shudder uncontrollably. Cochrane, impatient of such niceties and oblivious of the foul stench, leapt into the excavation and, with vigorovis sweeps of the shovel, cleared the coffin of its last layer of coagulated shingle.
Sharpe steeled himself to endure the nauseating odor and to stand at the edge of the grave to look at the simple wooden casket in which Bias Vivar was buried. The lid of the casket, made from some yellow timber, had cracked, and the wood itself had been badly stained by the cement, but some words which had been inscribed on the box in black paint were still visible; "BIAS VIVAR," the simple epitaph read, "REQUIESCAT IN PACE."
"Shall I open it?" Cochrane, who seemed more intent than Sharpe on finding Vivar's body, volunteered.
"I'll do it." Sharpe took one of the discarded spades and rammed its blade under the thin yellow planks. The grave was so shallow that he had no trouble in levering up the lid by wrenching out the horseshoe nails that had held the crude coffin together. Cochrane helped by pulling the planks free, then tossing them onto the piles of broken concrete.
The smell grew worse, filling the church with its sickening bite. MacAuley, unable to suppress his interest, had temporarily abandoned a patient to come and gape at the open coffin.
Vivar was draped in a shroud of blue cloth that looked like matted velvet. Sharpe worked the edge of the spade under the cloth and, dreading the fresh wave of smells he would provoke, jerked it upward. For a second or two the material clung to the rotting flesh beneath, then it pulled free to billow a fresh gust of effluvial stench into the church. Sharpe swept the cloth aside and let it fall, with the spade, beside the grave.
"Oh, Christ Almighty." MacAuley made the sign of the cross on his blood-soaked chest.
"Oh, good God," Sharpe whispered.
Major Suarez could not speak, but just sank to his knees.
"Mary, Mother of God," Harper crossed himself, then looked with horror at Sharpe.
Lord Cochrane reverted to poetry:
"Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow,
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow."
Then His Lordship began to laugh, and his laugh swelled to fill the whole church, for in the coffin, which had been partly weighted with stones, was the foully rotted corpse of a dog—a yellow dog, a wormy and half-liquefied dog that had been buried beside an altar so that on Judgment Day it would fly to its creator with the speed of a saint's resurrection. "Oh, woof, woof," Cochrane said, "woof, woof," and Sharpe wondered just what in hell's name he was supposed to do next.
"No wonder Bautista didn't want us to get at the grave," Harper said. "Jesus! Why did he bury a dog?"
"Because Madrid was pestering him to find Don Bias," Sharpe guessed. "Because Louisa's enquiries were more effective than she knew. Because he knew that if he didn't find a body, the questions would get more persistent and the enquiries more urgent."
"But a dog?" Harper asked. "Jesus, it isn't as if he couldn't find a dead man. They're ten a penny in this damned country."
"Bautista hated Vivar. So maybe using the dog was his idea of a joke? Besides, he didn't think anyone would open the coffin, and why should they? Because by the time he needed to produce a body Don Bias had been dead three months, so all Bautista needed do was produce a coffin that stank and sent off his trusted Marquinez to concoct the wretched thing. And it worked, at least till we turned up." Sharpe said the words bitterly, a despairing cry to the cold wind that whipped up from the mysterious Chilean southlands. He and Harper were walking around the citadel's ramparts over which, just moments before, the decomposed remains of the yellow dog had been tossed away.
"So maybe the bastard faked that message in Boney's picture just to have a reason to throw us out!" Harper said, "but Dona Louisa would have sent another request for the body! The thing wouldn't have ended with us."
"And Bautista would have provided her with a body, or rather a skeleton so rotted down that no one could ever tell who it had been, but he would have needed time to prepare it. He'd probably have had a lavish coffin made, with a silver plate on it, and he'd have found an unrecognizably decayed body to put inside, dressed in a gilded uniform, and he couldn't arrange all that with us sniffing around Puerto Crucero."
Harper stopped at an embrasure and stared at the far mountains. "So where's Bias Vivar?"
"Still out there," Sharpe nodded at the broken countryside to the north, at the retreating ridges and dark valleys where, he knew, he must now search for a friend's body. He did not want to make the search. He had been so sure that he would find the body under the garrison church's flagstones, and now he faced yet more time in this country that was so bitterly far from everything he loved. "We'll need two horses. Unless, of course, you've had enough?"
"Are you sure we need to stay?" Harper asked unhappily.
Sharpe's face was equally miserable. "We haven't found Vivar, so I don't think I can go home yet."
Harper shook his head. "And we'll not find him! You heard what Major Suarez said. He's looked twice and found nothing. Christ! Bautista probably had a thousand men looking!"
"I know. But I can't go back to Louisa and tell her I couldn't be bothered to search the place where Don Bias died. We have to take a look, Patrick," Sharpe said, then added hurriedly, "I do, anyway."
"I'll stay," Harper said robustly. "Jesus, if I get home I'll only have the bloody children screaming and the wife telling me I should drink less."
Sharpe smiled. "So she does think you're too fat?"
"She's a woman, what the hell does she know?" Harper tried to pull in his gut, and failed.
"You're thinner than you were," Sharpe said truthfully.
Harper patted his belly. "She won't know me when I get home. I'm dwindling. I'll be a wraith. If I'm alive at all."
"Two weeks," Sharpe heard the gloom in his friend's voice, and tried to alleviate it with a promise. "We'll stay two weeks more, and if we can't find Don Bias in a fortnight, then we'll give up the search, I promise. Just two weeks."
It was a promise that looked increasingly fragile as the days passed. Sharpe needed to search the valley where Don Bias had disappeared, but refugees from the countryside spoke of horrors that made travel unsafe. The Spaniards, retreating toward the guns of Valdivia, were pillaging farms and settlements, while the savages, scenting their enemy's weakness, were hunting down the refugees from Puerto Crucero's defeated garrison. The whole province was churning with bitterness, and Cochrane insisted that Sharpe and Harper could not risk traveling through the murderous chaos. "The damned Indians don't know you're English! They see a white skin and suddenly you're the evening's main dish—white meat served with fig sauce. Come to think of it, that's probably what happened to your friend Vivar. He was turned into a fricassee and three belches."
"A
re 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 Santos, 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 Bias."
"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 Bias," 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 unhappi-ness. "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 Bias 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 Bias had ridden into mystery, and Suarez even drew a map, telling Sharpe what parts of the valley had been most thoroughly searched for Bias 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 Bias 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 Bias Vivar, Count of Mouro-morto 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 Bias 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, serior, 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 troopers! 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 o
f 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, senor, 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, senor, 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, senor, 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, senor. 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."
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