Sharpe 16 - Sharpe's Honour (14 page)

The compliments seemed to soothe the bearded, suspicious man. Slowly, very slowly, El Matarife nodded. `You want to talk with her, Englishman?'

`For an hour.'

`Just talk?' There was appreciative laughter in the room.

Sharpe smiled. `Just talk. One hour, no more. She is in the convent?'

El Matarife was still convinced that Sharpe's mission was to secure his help with the summer's campaign. It was a nuisance that the English had heard of the woman's presence in the mountains, but he believed the Englishman when he said he merely wanted to talk. Besides, how could one Englishman and a Spanish boy rescue her from among his men? El Matarife smiled, knowing that he must send this Major Vaughn away satisfied. To simply deny that the Marquesa was in these mountains was to risk that this Englishman would want to search for himself. He gestured to one of his men, who left the inn's smoky room, and turned back to Sharpe. `You've met her before, Major Vaughn?'

`No.'

`You'll like her.' The Slaughterman laughed. `But she's not in the convent.'

`No?'

More wine was put in front of Sharpe. The Slaughterman was smiling contentedly. `She is here.'

`Here?'

`I heard you were coming, Englishman, and I thought I would help your General by letting you talk with her. She has much to tell you about your enemies. I waited to see if you would ask, if you had not, then I would have surprised you!'

Sharpe smiled. `I will tell my General of your help. He will want to reward you.' He was struggling not to show his excitement, nor his consternation. The thought of Helene in the power of this beast was foul, the thought of how he was to take her away from here was daunting, yet he dared not show it. Present too in his head was the recurring fear that she would know nothing, that she would find the death of her husband as great a mystery as Sharpe, yet if he had any hopes of regaining his rank and his career, he had to ask her his questions. `You are bringing her to this room?'

`I will give you a room to talk with her, Englishman.'

`I am grateful to you, Matarife.'

`A private room, Major!' El Matarife laughed and made an obscene gesture. `Perhaps when you see her you will want to do more than talk, yes?'

El Matarife's gust of laughter was interrupted by a shout from outside the inn and the sound of feet running. The back door was thrown open and a voice shouted that El Matarife should come and come quickly.

The Slaughterman pushed towards the door, Sharpe beside him, and the room was full of men shouting for lanterns, and then Sharpe ducked under the lintel and saw a light coming from a broken down shed that was being used as a stable. Men ran towards the shed, lanterns bright, and Sharpe went with them. He pushed through them and stopped at the doorway. He wanted to vomit, so sudden was the shock, and his next urge was to draw the big sword and scythe these beasts who pressed in the small yard around him.

A girl hung in the shed. She was naked. Her body was a tracery of gleaming rivulets of blood, blood new enough to shine, yet not so new that it still flowed.

She turned on the rope that was about her neck.

El Matarife swore. He cuffed at a man who claimed that the girl had committed suicide.

The body turned, slim and white. The thighs and stomach showed dark bruises beneath the blood that had reached her ankles. Her hands were slim and pale, the nails broken, but still with flecks of red where they had once been painted. There was straw in her hair.

A dozen men shouted. They had locked the girl in here and she must have found the rope. El Matarife's voice drowned them all, cursing them for this stupidity, their carelessness. He looked up at the tall Englishman. They are fools, sehor. I will punish them.'

Sharpe noticed how, for the first time, the Slaughterman called him sehor. He stared up at the face that had once been lovely. `Punish them well.'

`I will! I will!'

Sharpe turned away. `And give her Christian burial!'

`Yes, sehor.' The Slaughterman watched the Englishman closely. `She was beautiful, yes?'

`She was beautiful.'

`The Golden Whore.' El Matarife said the words slowly, as though he pronounced an epitaph. `You can't talk to her now, sehor.'

Sharpe looked at the hanging body. There were scratches on the breasts. He nodded and forced calmness into his voice. `I shall ride south this night.' He turned away. He knew El Matarife's men watched him, but he would show nothing. He shouted for Angel to bring the horses.

He stopped a mile from the small village. The memory of the hanging, turning body was foul in him. He thought of his wife dead, of the blood on her throat. He thought of the torture that the dead woman in the stable had endured, of the horrid last moments of a life. He closed his eyes and shuddered.

`We go back now, sehor?' Sharpe heard the sadness in Angel's voice that their mission had been wasted.

`No.'

`No?'

`We go to the convent.' They had seen it before the dusk, a building clinging impossibly to a plateau's edge. `We climb there tonight.' He opened his eyes, twisted in the saddle, and stared behind him. No one had followed them from the inn.

`We go to the convent? But she's dead!'

`She's called the whore of gold.' Sharpe's voice was savage. `Gold because of her hair, Angel, not her money. Whoever that girl was, she wasn't La Marquesa.'

But whoever the black-haired girl was whose body hung bloody and slim in the stable, she was dead, and newly dead at that, and Sharpe knew the girl had died because he had asked about La Marquesa. She had died so that Sharpe would leave this valley quietly, convinced that La Marquesa was dead. He pushed back with his heels, turning Carbine, and rode towards the dark mountain. He felt a thickness in his throat because the unknown girl was dead, and he promised her spirit, wherever it was, that he would avenge her. He rode with anger, he climbed to the Convent of the Heavens, and he planned a rescue and a battle.

CHAPTER 11

It could have been winter, so cold and misty was the plateau. At this height the mist was low cloud that threatened rain. Only the dripping leaves of the few stunted birches witnessed that summer had some to this high, strange, chilling place.

Sharpe had not slept. He had planned the fight he knew he would face once El Matarife discovered that he had not passed his sentinels at the two bridges. In the dawn he had scouted the plateau's edge, peering through the mist down the tumbled, precipitous slopes of the great hill.

Sharpe had not brought Angel all the way to the flat summit of the great hill. He had left the boy on the track with both rifles and careful, painstaking instructions.

Angel had been worried. `It's a holy place, sehor.'

`Trust me, Angel, just trust me.'

Sharpe had climbed to the plateau with the two horses, and with the fear that this dreadful, desperate deed that he planned could all be for nothing. He would fight Partisans, he would offend the Church, and ail for a woman who might not have the answers to save his career and solve Hogan's mystery.

Angel had wished him luck, but the boy had been distressed. `We have to fight them, senor?' He spoke of the Partisans.

`To defeat France, yes.' It was a lie, or at the very least Sharpe did not know if it was a truth. Yet Angel, who trusted the English, had believed him.

Now, as the dawn showed the grass wet on the plateau, and as the grey clouds sifted through the small trees, Sharpe galloped towards the convent. He was alone in the high place.

The Convent of the Heavens deserved its name. It was built at the highest point of this steep range of hills, a building that clung alarmingly to the edge of a precipice. It had been built in the days when the Muslims hunted the Christians north, when the prayers of Christians had to be offered in high places that could be defended by Christian swords. The walls of the convent showed no windows. They were grey like the rocks, stained by the rain, a fortress of women. There was only one door in its prison-like walls.

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 oh 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 flodr 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.'

`She is a sinner.'

`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 she 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 foilow 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.