It was then that the Riflemen appeared from the house, splintering down the bullet-riddled door and running into the yard with sword-bayonets fixed. They cheered the Spaniard. ‘East!’ Vivar shouted above their cheers, pointing with his sword. ‘East!’
The Riflemen ran eastwards, away from the sea, into the wooded gully where there would be temporary safety from the French Dragoons. Those Dragoons, recovering from the shock of Vivar’s attack, and realizing how they outnumbered the Spanish horsemen, were reforming their ranks on the road beneath the farmhouse. The French trumpet sounded the advance.
Vivar let the counterattack come. He was yielding ground, content that the French should regain the farm buildings while he withdrew to the gulley. His men fired from the saddle. When they reloaded they rammed the bullets down their carbine barrels with ramrods that were attached by a hinged sleeve at the weapons’ muzzles and so could not be dropped. The farmer, his wife, and the Parkers’ coachman fled with the greenjackets.
The last of the Spanish Cazadores crashed down the gully’s slope. Sharpe’s Riflemen lined the brink, firing at the Frenchmen whose pursuit, though enthusiastic, was doomed. The gully’s brush and thorn would force the Dragoons to funnel into the narrow paths that were covered by the Rifles and, realizing the danger, de l’Eclin called his men back. A few Frenchmen, stung to anger, spurred onwards and Sharpe watched as the rifle bullets destroyed their scattered charge. ‘Cease fire!’
‘Follow us!’ Vivar called from the gully’s far crest.
‘Sir!’ Harper shouted the warning, making Sharpe turn back.
Sprinting over the pasture, her skirt held up in her right hand and her bonnet grasped in her left, came Louisa Parker. A bellow of rage sounded from the farm, evidently her aunt’s despairing protest, but the girl ignored it. She skirted a fallen, bleeding horse. A Frenchman began running in pursuit, but Hagman dropped the man with a single shot.
‘Lieutenant! Lieutenant!’ Louisa shouted.
‘God Almighty!’ Harper laughed as the girl, gasping for breath and eyes wide with the excitement of the moment, crashed into the gully and threw herself at Sharpe as though he could protect her against all the world.
Sharpe, exhilarated by her arrival, opened his arms to check her headlong flight. For a second she clung to him, laughing and breathless, then she drew away. Sharpe’s men cheered the girl’s defiance.
‘Lieutenant!’ Vivar had spurred back to hasten the Riflemen’s retreat, and now stared with amazement at the girl at Sharpe’s side. ‘Lieutenant?’
But there was no time for explanations, no time for anything but the panicked flight eastwards, away from the sea’s safety, and back to the mysteries enshrined in Blas Vivar’s strongbox. The wild goose was safe.
CHAPTER 10
They journeyed throughout that night, climbing ever higher and always into the teeth of a wind that brought the chill from the snow which lay in the gullies of the upper slopes. Past midnight, from a wooded spur, Sharpe saw the far off gleam of the western sea. Much closer, and beneath him in the dark tangle of the lowlands, a smear of camp fires betrayed where men bivouacked. ‘The French,’ Vivar said softly.
‘Who believed I was escorting you southwards,’ Sharpe said accusingly.
‘Later! Later!’ Vivar responded, just as he had to every other attempt Sharpe had made to invite an explanation for the Spaniard’s behaviour. Beyond Vivar the Riflemen, bowed under their heavy packs, trudged up the hill path. The Cazadores led their horses to conserve the strength of the animals for the long journey which lay ahead. Only the wounded were allowed to ride. Even Louisa Parker had been told she must walk. Vivar, seeing the girl go past, scowled at Sharpe. ‘I leave you alone for two days and you find an English girl?’
Sharpe heard the hostility in the Spaniard’s voice and chose to answer it mildly. ‘She ran away from her aunt and uncle.’
Vivar spat towards the distant lights. ‘I heard all about them! The Parkers, yes? They call themselves missionaries, but I think they are English busybodies. I was told that the Bishop was going to eject them from Santiago de Compostela, but I see the French have done that favour for us. Why did she run away?’
‘I think she craves excitement.’
‘We can provide that,’ Vivar said sourly, ‘but I have never considered soldiers to be fit company for a girl; even a Protestant girl.’
‘You want me to shoot her?’ Sharpe suggested acidly.
Vivar turned back towards the path. ‘I’ll shoot her myself, Lieutenant, if she makes any difficulties. We have our own mission, and that must not be put at risk.’
‘What mission?’
‘Later! Later!’
They climbed higher, leaving the shelter of the trees to emerge onto a wind-scoured slope of thin grass and treacherous rocks. The night was dark, but the cavalrymen knew their path. They crossed a high valley, splashing through a stream, then climbed again. ‘I’m going,’ Vivar said, ‘to a remote place. Somewhere the French won’t disturb us.’ He walked in silence for a few paces. ‘So you met Tomas?’
Sharpe sensed that it was a great effort for Vivar to make the question sound casual. He tried to respond in the same careless manner. ‘That’s your brother’s name?’
‘If he is my brother. I can count no traitor as a brother.’ Vivar’s shame and bitterness was now undisguised. He had been unwilling to discuss the Count of Mouromorto earlier, yet the subject was unavoidable. Sharpe had met the Count, and explanations must be offered. Vivar had obviously decided that now, in the clean cold darkness, was the right time. ‘How did he seem to you?’
‘Angry,’ Sharpe said inadequately.
‘Angry? He should be filled with shame. He thinks Spain’s only hope is to ally itself with France.’ They were walking along a high ridge and Vivar had to shout above the wind’s noise. ‘We call such men anfrancesados. They believe in French ideas, but in truth they are Godless traitors. Tomas was ever seduced by northern notions, but such things bring no happiness, Lieutenant, only a great discontent. He would cut out Spain’s heart and put a French encyclopaedia in its place. He would forget God, and enthrone reason, virtue, equality, liberty, and all the other nonsenses which make men forget that bread has doubled in price and only tears are more plentiful.’
‘You don’t believe in reason?’ Sharpe let the conversation veer away from the painful subject of the Count of Mouromorto’s loyalty.
‘Reason is the mathematics of thinking, nothing more. You don’t live your life by such dry disciplines. Mathematics cannot explain God, no more can reason, and I believe in God! Without Him we are no more than corruption. But I forget. You are not a believer.’
‘No,’ Sharpe said lamely.
‘But that disbelief is better than Tomas’s pride. He thinks he is greater than God, but before this year is out, Lieutenant, I will deliver him to the justice of God.’
‘The French may think otherwise?’
‘I do not give a damn what the French think. I only care about victory. That is why I rescued you. That is why, this night, we travel in the dark.’ Vivar would explain no more, for all his energies were needed to cajole the flagging men further and higher. Louisa Parker, exhausted beyond speech, was lifted onto a horse. Still the path climbed.
At dawn, beneath a sky scoured clean of cloud in which the morning star was a fading speck above the frosted land, Sharpe saw that they travelled towards a fortress built on a mountaintop.
It was not a modern fort, built low behind sloping earthen walls that would bounce the cannon shot high over ditches and ravelins, but a high fortress of ancient and sullen menace. Nor was it a gracious place. This was not the home of some flamboyant lord, but a stronghold built to defend a land till time itself was finished.
The fort had lain empty for a hundred years. It was too distant and too high to be easily supplied, and Spain had not needed such places. But now, in a cold dawn, Blas Vivar led his tired Cazadores under the old, moss-thick arch and into a cobbled courtyar
d that was rank with weed and grass. Some of his men, commanded by a Sergeant, had garrisoned the old fortress while the Major was gone, and the smell of their cooking fires was welcome after the chill of the night. Not much else was welcoming; the ramparts were overgrown, the keep was a home for ravens and bats, and the cellar was flooded, but Vivar’s delight, as he led Sharpe about the walls, was infectious.
‘The first of the Vivars built this place almost a thousand years ago! It was our home, Lieutenant. Our flag flew from that tower and the Moors never took it.’
He led Sharpe to the northern bastion which, like the eyrie of some massive bird of prey, jutted above immeasurable space. The valley far below was a blur of streams and frosted tracks. From here, for centuries, steel-helmed men had watched for the glint of reflected sunlight from far-off heathen shields. Vivar pointed to a deep shadowed cleft in the northern mountains where the frost lay like snow. ‘You see that pass? A Count of Mouromorto once held that road for three days against a Muslim horde. He filled hell with their miserable souls, Lieutenant. They say you can still find rusted arrowheads and scraps of their chain mail in the crevices of that place.’
Sharpe turned to look at the high tower. ‘The castle now belongs to your brother?’
Vivar took the question to be a goad to his pride. ‘He has disgraced the family’s name. Which is why it is my duty to restore it. With God’s help, I shall.’
The words were a glimpse into a proud soul, a clue to the ambition which drove the Spaniard, but Sharpe had intended to elicit a different response; one that he now sought directly. ‘Won’t your brother know you’re here?’
‘Oh, indeed. But the French would need ten thousand men to surround this hill, and another five thousand to assault the fortress. They won’t come. They are just beginning to discover what problems victory will give them.’
‘Problems?’ Sharpe asked.
Vivar smiled. ‘The French, Lieutenant, are learning that in Spain great armies starve, and small armies are defeated. You can only win here if the people feed you, and the people are learning to hate the French.’ He led the way down the rampart. ‘Think of the French position! Marshal Soult pursued your army north-west, to where? To nowhere! He is stranded in the mountains, and around him is nothing but snow, bad roads, and a vengeful peasantry. Everything he eats he must find, and in winter, in Galicia, there is not much to be found if the people wish to hide it. No, he is desperate. Already his messengers are being killed, his patrols ambushed, and so far only a handful of the people are resisting him! When all the countryside rises against him, then his life will be a torment of blood.’
It was a chilling prophecy and spoken with so much verve that Sharpe was convinced by it. He remembered how de l’Eclin had frankly expressed his fear of the night; his fears of peasant knives in the dark.
Vivar turned again to stare at the notch in the mountains where his ancestor had made carnage of a Muslim army. ‘Some of the people fight already, Lieutenant, but the rest are frightened. They see the French victorious, and they feel abandoned of God. They need a sign. They need, if you like, a miracle. These are peasants. They don’t know reason, but they do know their Church and their land.’
Sharpe felt his skin creep, not with the morning’s cold, nor with fear, but with the apprehension of something beyond his imaginings. ‘A miracle?’
‘Later, my friend, later!’ Vivar laughed at the mystery he deliberately provoked, then ran down the steps towards the courtyard. His voice was suddenly mischievous, full of joy and nonsense. ‘You still haven’t thanked me for rescuing you!’
‘Rescuing me! Good God! I was about to destroy those bastards, only you interfered!’ Sharpe followed him down the steps. ‘You haven’t apologized for lying to me.’
‘Nor do I intend to. On the other hand, I do forgive you for losing your temper with me when last we met. I told you that you wouldn’t last a day without me!’
‘If you hadn’t sent the damned French after me, I’d be halfway to Oporto by now!’
‘But there was a reason for sending them after you!’ Vivar had reached the foot of the rampart steps where he waited for Sharpe. ‘I wanted to clear the French out of Santiago de Compostela. I thought that if they pursued you, then I could enter the town when they were gone. So I spread the rumour, it was believed, but the town was garrisoned anyway. So!’ He shrugged.
‘In other words, you can’t win a war without me.’
‘Think how bored you would be if you’d gone to Lisbon! No Frenchmen to kill, no Blas Vivar to admire!’ Vivar linked his arm through Sharpe’s in the intimate Spanish manner. ‘In all seriousness, Lieutenant, I beg your pardon for my behaviour. I can justify my lies, but not my insults. For those, I apologize.’
Sharpe was instantly excruciated with embarrassment. ‘I behaved badly, too. I’m sorry.’ Then he remembered another duty. ‘And thank you for rescuing us. We were dead men without you.’
Vivar’s ebullience returned. ‘Now I have another miracle to arrange. We must work, Lieutenant! Work! Work! Work!’
‘A miracle?’
Vivar loosed his arm so he could face Sharpe. ‘My friend, I will tell you all, if I can. I will even tell you tonight after supper, if I can. But some men are coming here, and I need their permission to reveal what is in the strongbox. Will you trust me till I’ve spoken with those men?’
Sharpe had no choice. ‘Of course.’
‘Then we must work.’ Vivar clapped his hands to attract his men’s attention. ‘Work! Work! Work!’
Everything that Vivar’s men needed had to be carried up the mountain. The cavalry horses became packhorses for firewood, fuel, and fodder. The food came from mountain villages, some of it fetched for miles on the backs of mules or men. The Major had sent word throughout the land which had been his father’s domain that supplies were needed, and Sharpe watched the response in astonishment. ‘My brother,’ Vivar said with grim satisfaction, ‘ordered his people to do nothing which might hinder the French. Ha!’
All that day the supplies arrived in the castle. There were jars of grain and beans, boxes of cheese, nets of bread, and skins of wine. There was hay for the horses. Cords of wood were dragged up the steep path, and bundles of brushwood brought for tinder. Some of the brushwood was made into brooms that were used to clean out the keep. Saddle blankets made curtains and rugs, while fires seeped warmth into cold stone.
The men whom Vivar expected arrived at noon. A trumpet call announced the visitors’ approach, and there was a flourish of celebration in its sound. Some of the Cazadores went down the steep path to escort the two men into the fortress. The newcomers were priests.
Sharpe watched their arrival from the window of Louisa Parker’s room. He had gone to see her to discover why she had fled from her family. She had slept all morning and now seemed entirely recovered from the night’s exertions. She looked past him at the dismounting priests and gave an exaggerated shudder of pretended horror. ‘I can never properly rid myself of feeling there’s something very sinister about Romish clergy. My aunt is convinced they have tails and horns.’ She watched as the priests advanced through a guard of honour to where Blas Vivar waited to greet them. ‘I expect they do have tails and horns, and cloven hooves. Don’t you agree?’
Sharpe turned away from the window. He felt embarrassed and awkward. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
Louisa widened her eyes. ‘You do sound grim.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Sharpe was speaking more abruptly than he would have liked. ‘It’s just that…’ His voice tailed away.
‘You think your soldiers will be unsettled by my presence?’
Sharpe did not like to say that Blas Vivar had already been unsettled by Louisa’s impulsive act. ‘It isn’t a fit place for you,’ he said instead. ‘You’re not used to this kind of thing.’ He waved his hand around the room, as though to demonstrate its shortcomings, though in truth Vivar’s Cazadores had done everything they could to make the foreign girl comfortable. He
r room, though small, had a fireplace in which logs smouldered. There was a bed of cut bracken and crimson saddle blankets. She had no other belongings, not even a change of linen.
She seemed crestfallen by Sharpe’s strict tone. ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant.’
‘No.’ Sharpe tried to dismiss her apology, even though he had elicited it.
‘My presence embarrasses you?’
Sharpe turned back to the window and watched the Cazadores gather about the two priests. Some of his Riflemen looked on in curiosity.
‘Would you like me to go back to the French?’ Louisa asked tartly.
‘Of course not.’
‘I think you would.’
‘Don’t be so damned stupid!’ Sharpe turned on her viciously, and was instantly ashamed. He did not want her to know just how glad he was that she had run from her aunt and uncle and, in his effort to disguise that gladness, he had let his voice snap uncontrollably. ‘I’m sorry, miss.’
Louisa was just as contrite. ‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘I shouldn’t have sworn.’
‘I can’t imagine you giving up swearing, even for me.’ There was a trace of her old mischievousness, a hint of a smile, and Sharpe was glad of it.
‘It’s just that your aunt and uncle will worry about you,’ he said lamely. ‘And we’re probably going to have to fight again, and a fight’s no place for a woman.’
Louisa said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. ‘The Frenchman, de l’Eclin? He offended me. I think he perceived me as a spoil of war.’
‘He was offensive?’
‘I imagine he thought he was being very gallant.’ Louisa, dressed in the blue skirts and coat in which she had fled the travelling coach, paced about her small room. ‘Would I offend you by saying that I preferred your protection to his?’
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