Sharpe knocked and waited. He knocked again, then hammered the door with a stone, making sparks fly from the square-headed iron nails that studded the great planks of wood. He could hear the sound reverberating within the building, but no answer came.
He waited. The mist drifted over the plateau. The two horses, tethered to a great stone, watched him. Their saddles were beaded with moisture.
He kicked the door, cursing, then found a larger stone that he smashed onto the timber, smashed again, until the hollow echoes were like the sound of a battery of field artillery in full fight.
There was a click.
In one of the door’s two leaves was a small shutter, protected by a rusted iron grille, and the shutter had slid back. He could see an eye staring at him. He smiled and spoke in his most polite voice. ‘I have come to see La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba.’
The eye blinked, the shutter slid shut, then nothing.
He waited.
There was silence from the great building. No bolts were shot back on the door, no footsteps or voices sounded from the far side. For a moment he wondered if the eye beyond the shutter had been a dream, so silent was the grey building. It seemed to have slept here for a thousand empty years and his knocking was an offence against eternity.
He found himself an even larger rock, one that he needed to lift with both hands, and he carried it to the door, measured his swing, and thumped it at the place where the two leaves met. He swung it again and again, seeing the right hand leaf jar back a fraction with each blow, and the noise was huge again, echoing from the hallway within, and he wondered what Patrick Harper would think if he knew that his friend was breaking into a convent. Sharpe could almost hear the Ulster voice. ‘God save Ireland.’
The rock swung and crashed, the door jerked back, and he saw an iron bar that was bent but still holding. He hammered it again, cursing with the effort, and despite the chill morning he could feel the sweat on his body and he drove the huge rock with all his strength at the weak spot and the door, at last, shattered back, the iron bar broken, and he could see into the convent.
Miles to the west, at the edge of the great plain, the army marched. Battalion after Battalion of redcoats, battery after battery of guns, all marching eastwards with the cavalry in the van searching for the retreating French.
The Marquess of Wellington, Grandee of Spain with the title of Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo, and Duque da Victoria in Portugal, looked at the northern rain clouds and scowled. ‘Are they coming south?’
I think not, my Lord,‘ an aide said.
The General was on horseback. He had set the army in motion and he marched it eastwards. He prayed that rain would not soak the roads and slow him down. The French must not be given time to unite their armies in Spain against him. He looked at the man who rode to his left. ‘Well?’
Major Hogan listed the news of the night, the messages that had come from enemy country. The news was good, so far as if went, though Hogan could not say with certainty whether the fortress at Burgos was prepared for a long siege.
‘Find out! Find out!’ Wellington said. ‘Is that all?’ His tone suggested that he hoped it was.
‘One other thing, my Lord.’ Hogan took a deep breath. ‘It seems that the Marquesa de Casares el Grande has been arrested by the ecclesiastical authorities. We hear she’s in a convent.’
Wellington stared at Hogan as if wondering why he had bothered to tell him such a trivial piece of news. Their horses walked slowly. The General frowned. ‘Sharpe?’ He gave a snort that was half laughter and half scorn. ‘That’s stopped him, eh? The vixen’s gone to ground!’
‘Indeed, my Lord.’
The general looked again at the clouds. The wind, such as it was, came from the east. He frowned again. ‘He wouldn’t be such a god-damned fool as to break into a convent, would he, Hogan?’
Hogan was of the opinion that, for the sake of a woman, Sharpe would do just that, but this did not seem to be the time to say so. ‘I’m sure not, my Lord. That was not my worry.’
‘What is your worry?’ Wellington’s tone suggested that it had better be substantial to take up his time.
‘The arrest was supposed to be secret, my Lord, but inevitably rumours have spread. It seems that some French cavalry have gone north to look for her.’
Wellington laughed. ‘Let them break into the convent.’
‘Indeed, my Lord.’
‘Rather they were there than facing us, eh? So Bonaparte’s declared war on nuns, has he?’
‘My concern, my Lord, was for Sharpe. If this General Verigny gets his hands on him.’ Hogan shrugged.
‘My God, he’d better not!’ Wellington’s voice was loud enough to startle some marching soldiers. ‘Sharpe’s got more sense than to be caught, hasn’t he? On the other hand, considering what a god-damned fool he is, maybe not. Still, there’s nothing we can do about it, Hogan.’
‘No, my Lord.’
The General nodded to the Colonel of the Battalion they passed, throwing out a word of praise for his men, then looked again at Hogan. ‘Sharpe had better not break into that god-damned convent, Hogan. I’d rather the bloody frogs caught him!’
‘It seems he’s done for either way, my Lord.’
Wellington scowled. ‘He’s done for anyway, man. You know that, so do I. We just strung him a little hope.’ The subject of Sharpe seemed to irritate Wellington. The General no longer believed that the death of the Marques held a mystery that threatened him, the advance into Spain and the campaign that loomed ahead had dwarfed such a worry into insignificance. He nodded at the Irishman. ‘Keep me informed, Hogan, keep me informed.’
‘Indeed, my Lord.’
Hogan let his horse fall behind. The Marquesa was immured in a convent, and his friend, by that fact, was doomed. A French cavalry regiment had gone hunting in the mountains, and Sharpe had only a boy to protect him. Sharpe was doomed.
The outside of the Convent of the Heavens was grey and bare. The interior was rich and brilliant. The hallway floor was of chequered tiles, the walls of gold mosaic, the ceiling painted. There were pictures on the walls. Facing him, alone in the cavernous hallway, was a single woman dressed in white robes.
‘Go away.’
It seemed a hopeful thing to say to a man who had just spent twenty minutes breaking down a door. Sharpe stepped over the rock that had fallen in the doorway and smiled at her. ‘Good morning, ma’am.‘ He brushed his jacket down and politedly took off his shako. ’I wish to speak with La Marquesa de Casares ...‘
‘She is not here.’ The woman was tall, her face lined with age. She had a splendid dignity that made Sharpe feel shabby.
He took one pace forward, his boots unnaturally loud in the cavernous hallway. ‘You may force me to bring my men and search the whole convent.’ That struck him as the right thing to say. The woman was frightened, and rightly, by the incursion of one man into this building where no man but a priest was ever supposed to tread. She would surely fear a whole company of soldiers.
She looked at him, frowning, ‘Who are you?’
The truth would not do. When the tale got about that an Englishman had broken into a convent there would be hell to pay. Sharpe smiled. ‘Major Vaughn.’
‘English?’
He thought how often Wellington had insisted in his orders that the Roman church in Spain must be respected by the British. Nothing, the General believed, was more damaging to the alliance than insults to Spain’s religion. Sharpe smiled. ‘No, ma’am. American.‘ He hoped Colonel Leroy would forgive the lie, and he was glad that he did not wear a red coat that was always thought to be the only uniform of Britain.
She frowned. ‘American?’
‘I have come a long way to see La Marquesa.’
‘Why do you wish to see that woman?’
‘Matters of policy.’ He hoped his Spanish was correct.
She tossed her head. ‘She will see no one.’
‘She will see me.’
‘So are we all.’ Sharpe wondered why on earth he was swapping theological small talk with a Mother Superior. He supposed she was the Mother Superior.
‘She is doing penance.’
‘I wish only to talk with her.’
‘The Church has ordered that no one should see her.’
‘I have come from North America to see her.’ He liked the lie. Even in this remote convent the news must have arrived that the Americans had joined the war that burned about the world. ‘My President demands that I see her. He will send many coins to Rome if I can see her.’ Why the hell not, he thought? The Americans had declared war on Britain, so why should the Pope not declare war on America? He embroidered the lie. ‘Many, many gold coins.’
‘It is against God’s law to see her.’
‘God will forgive me.’
‘You are a sinner.’
Sharpe frowned. ‘I am an American!’
The Mother Superior turned away, her voice superb. ‘You cannot see her. Go away.’
She had reached a door and Sharpe feared breaking through another barrier in this place, for he needed all the time he could scrape together for his battle against El Matarife.
He ran forward, his boots loud on the chequered tiles, and the noise made the woman turn. For the first time she showed fear. It seemed for a moment that she would try to stop him as she lifted her thin hands from beneath the strip of white cloth that hung from her neck, but as he came close she twisted aside and snatched up a brass bell that stood on a dark oak table. Sharpe thought she was going to hit him with the bell, but instead to began to ring it. She fled from him, through the door, the bell clanging as a warning for the nuns to hide.
He followed. It was as if a wildcat had come into a hen run. He was on the top floor of a double cloister and the sound of the bell was driving white-robed women in desperate flight towards stairs and doors. Despite their panicked, fluttering scattering, they were all silent, only the clanging bell telling Sharpe that he had not been struck deaf as a punishment for his terrible sin. His was the only voice in the place. ‘Helene!’
There were a dozen doors to choose from. Somewhere in the recesses of the building the bell still clanged. He decided to follow it. ‘Helene! Helene!’
He found himself in a long corridor hung with huge, gloomy pictures that showed martyrs undergoing the kind of fate that the bell now warned the nuns against. The corridor smelt foully of soap.
He pushed open doors. In the chapel there was a huddle of nuns, their backs to him, their robes quivering as their hands counted beads. The candles flickered. ‘Helene?’
There was no answer. The bell still tolled. He ran down a flight of stairs and heard the soft sound of slippered feet fleeing on flagstones. He wondered who repaired the old buildings. Did the nuns plaster the walls and put up new beams? Perhaps men were allowed in to do the heavy work, just as a priest undoubtedly visited to give the sacraments. ‘Helene!’
He pushed open doors of empty cells, losing himself in the maze of small passages and musty rooms. He pushed open one door to find himself, aghast, in a bathroom. A woman, dressed in a white linen shift, sat in a tub of water. She stared at him, her mouth dropped, and he shut the door quickly before her scream deafened him.
He went through another door and found himself in a walled kitchen garden. The clouds were grey overhead. It had begun to rain, soaking some scrawny chickens who miserably flocked at one end of the walled garden. ‘Helene!’
Back in the convent he found the refectory, the long tables set with dull metal plates. The Virgin Mary, in a vast picture, raised her eyes to the beamed ceiling. ‘Helene! Helene!’
And this time there was a scream in reply, the first human voice Sharpe had heard since the Mother Superior had lifted the brass bell, and Sharpe crossed the great room to push open a door beside the empty, cold fireplace.
A chicken carcass missed his head by inches. It was only half-plucked and the feathers settled on the shoulder of his Rifleman’s jacket.
He was in a huge kitchen, the vaulted stone ceiling blackened by the centuries of smoke, and facing him were a dozen nuns who had none of the demure fear that filled the rest of the convent. The half-plucked chicken had been hurled by a great, ham-faced woman with forearms like pontoon cables, who now seized a second chicken and drew back her arm.
Sharpe ducked. The body thumped on the wall behind him. ‘Helene!’
He saw her, and even here, imprisoned and drab, her beauty checked him. She made the breath stop in his throat and his heart race with the surge of desire.
The widowed Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba stared at him. She was dressed in a shapeless grey shift, her hair caught up and tied by a hank of grey rag, her face devoid of any cosmetic. The nun who held her had a hand over La Marquesa’s mouth, but Helene must have sunk her teeth into the woman’s palm for the hand jerked away and she struggled against the other hand. ‘Richard!’ Her eyes were huge, as though he was a ghost.
A great flabby ball of dough was hurled at him, he ducked again and went forward, and the nun who had started the artillery bombardment picked up a rolling pin that was as big as a cannon’s axle. Sharpe ignored her. He looked at the nun holding La Marquesa. ‘Let her go.’
The rolling pin was tapped once into a huge hand. The woman, Sharpe thought, looked big enough to be Patrick Harper’s twin. It was a good job she had chosen the Church, he reflected, for otherwise she would have made some poor man’s life a flaming hell. She stepped towards him, no fear on her face, the rolling pin ready to strike.
Yet how to fight a nun? He could not draw the sword, and he dared not strike her with his fists, but one blow from the rolling pin would shatter his skull. La Marquesa still struggled. She seemed to understand his plight and shouted at him in Spanish. ‘Take your trousers down!’
The suggestion checked the woman, and Sharpe used her pause to move right and pick up an unthrown chicken by the neck. He whirled the carcass, threw, and the half-drawn giblets flailed bloodily across the room and slapped the woman over the face and she snarled, raised the pin, and Sharpe heard the screams of the other nuns. He watched the great weapon, ducked, side-stepped, and ran towards the pinioned Marquesa. His approach scared her captor, she let Helene go, and Helene ran desperately to Sharpe’s side.
‘This way!’
The rolling pin missed his body by inches, brushing his sleeve as the nun hammered it onto the table with a thump that would have stirred the coffined dead.
‘Come on!’ He had the Marquesa’s hand in his, he was running, and then the rolling pin slammed past his head to crack on the door of the kitchen.
They ran. Another chicken thumped on his back, something metallic clanged on the flagstones behind him, but then he was in the refectory, he had Helene’s hand in his hand and he hurried her towards the far end. He was laughing, she was laughing, and somewhere in the convent the bell was ringing still.
It could, he thought, be a difficult retreat. He had penetrated deep into enemy country, seized his prize, and he now had to regain the front door. But no one appeared to bar their withdrawal, and the huge nun of the kitchens was not prepared for pursuit. He looked at the woman beside him, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Did you want to be rescued?’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ She laughed and led him down a long corridor. ‘Christ, Richard! I was told you were dead!’ He laughed with her and her hand was warm in his. ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘An angel told me.’
She led him upstairs. The bell had stopped. ‘I must look awful.’
‘You look wonderful.’
‘The bitches took my clothes! God! You should see the lavatories here, Richard! You have to hold her breath if you want to piss. I’ve been constipated for a week! You can’t bathe, you can’t wash! I haven’t washed my hair since I got here. No wonder they don’t marry, no man could bear them. Oh Lord!’ This last was to greet the Moth
er Superior who waited in the front hallway. She was alone. She frowned.
‘You cannot go.’
La Marquesa ignored her. ‘Richard? Open that door.’ She pointed at a solid oak door at the side of the hall.
‘Open it?’
‘For Christ’s sake, do it!’
It was locked. The Mother Superior protested, but Helene insisted, and Sharpe kicked it with his heel, shaking it, then kicked again to splinter it open. Helene pushed past him. ‘They took my jewels, my clothes, everything! They’ve got a thousand dollars worth of my jewellery in there!’
Sharpe listened as she raked through drawers and opened cupboards. He heard the rustle of cloth, the chink of coins, and he smiled wanly at the Mother Superior who stood frowning and unable to stop the desecration. Sharpe shrugged. ‘My President will make reparations, madame. Just write to him.’
La Marquesa swore cheerfully in the room, then, holding a bundle, came back to the hall. She smiled at the Mother Superior. ‘I’m going to commit adultery again. Lots of it.’ She laughed, held her hand out to Sharpe, and he went with her to the broken front door.
She stepped over the rock that still blocked the opening. ‘Christ! It’s raining! My hair will be ruined!’
‘You said it needed a wash.’ He remembered to retrieve his shako from the hall table.
She laughed. ‘Are those our horses?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t ridden a horse in years.’ She walked outside and put her face back as if to let the rain drench away the smell of the convent. She laughed with pure delight. ‘Where are we going?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then let’s go there!’ She chose Carbine for herself, unerringly picking the better horse. She mounted, her bundle given to Sharpe, and she waited for him to mount Angel’s horse. Then she turned Carbine towards the open grass of the rain-swept plateau, pushed her heels back, and urged the big, black horse into a gallop.
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